The Delhi High Court in the case Aditya Singh (minor) Versus. Consortium Of national Law Universities observed and has held that the law does not commend a total ‘hands off’ approach for Courts where the answer key is demonstrably wrong, underscoring that injustice caused to a candidate must be undone.
The bench headed by Justice Jyoti Singh in the case observed that there being no absolute proscription against a Court examining a challenge to the answer key in an examination process, even if there is an expert opinion before the Court.
The court in the case stated that the law does not commend a total ‘hands off’ approach and in exceptional cases where questions are found to be demonstrably wrong, the resultant injustice to a candidate must be redressed and undone.
The bench headed by Justice Singh partly allowed a petition filed seeking to quash of the final answer key published for CLAT-UG 2025 examination conducted on December 01.
In the present case, the petition was filed by a candidate who appeared in the examination and specifically challenged answers to five questions.
Further, the court found two errors which is to be demonstrably clear and said that shutting a blind eye to the same would be injustice to the petitioner and that it may impact the result of other candidates.
The court in the case directed that the result of the Petitioner will be revised to award marks to him for Question No.14 in accordance with the scheme of marking.
The court stated that since the court upheld option ‘C’ as the correct answer, which was also the view of the Expert Committee, benefit cannot be restricted only to the Petitioner and will extend to all candidates who have opted for option ‘C’.
The petition filed was opposed by Consortium of NLUs, wherein it is stated that an expert committee was constituted by the Consortium which has duly considered all objections received from various candidates before finalising the answer key.
It has been stated by the consortium that it has adopted a rigorous internal process before finalising and publishing the Final Answer Key on December 07 and that such process gave adequate opportunity to all candidates, which includes the Petitioner, to raise their objections to the Provisional Answer Key.
The counsel, Mr. Dhanesh Relan, Mr. Arjeet Gaur, Mr. Barinda Batra, Mr. Atul Kanti Tripathi, Mr. Suryansh Jamwal and Mr. Sachin Sharma, Advocates appeared for the Petitioner.
The counsel, Mr. Sandeep Sethi, Senior Advocate with Mr. Arun Srikumar, Mr. A. K. Trivedi, Mr. Ram Shankar, Mr. Yash Jagra, Mr. Shubhansh Thakur and Ms. Shreya Sethi, Advocates represented the Respondent.
