The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Revalue 11 questions: High Court

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Tuesday, Aug 03, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Revalue 11 questions: High Court

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, AUG. 2. The Madras High Court today ordered revaluation of 11 out of 25 questions in the Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examinations which were not valued by Anna University for various reasons.

Disapproving of its practice of reviewing the answer keys of paper-setters by an expert committee, the First Bench, comprising the Chief Justice, B. Subhashan Reddy, and Justice Prabha Sridevan, directed the university to take steps to "re-compute and hold fresh counselling by integrating the improvement candidates also." The order is applicable to all students, including those who have not come to the court and shall be complied with by the university within a week. The present batch of appeals was directed against a June 15 order by Justice Prafulla Kumar Misra.

Though originally the dispute was over 25 questions, there was no argument on three of them. Six of the remaining 22 questions went out of consideration, as there was "unanimity in the answers provided by the paper setter and the expert committee." The Bench ruled that the single judge had rightly accepted them to be correct.

This left the disputed figure at 16. Of these, three questions suffered from "inconsistency because of variation in Tamil translation." Differing from the views of the paper setter, the single judge accepted the committee's recommendation to exclude the three questions from valuation. The Bench upheld the order, bringing down the total number of disputed questions to 13. Of these 13, the Bench upheld the single judge's finding on two questions. The committee had given "valid reasons for differing from the paper setter."

Reasons for ruling

For the remaining 11 questions, ordered revalued, the Bench gave the following reasons:

Question 105 of MA-7: The committee gave an answer, which was different from that of the paper setter. But the single judge accepted the answer key of the paper setter. The Bench said it was a right decision.

Question 64 of BS-6: The committee recommended its deletion, saying there was one correct answer, apart from what was contained in the answer key. The single judge's order directing the university to award marks for both answers was upheld by the Bench.

Questions 88, 116 and 117 of BS-6: The Bench ruled that these three questions were rightly deleted.

Question 87 of BS-6: As per the answer key, the correct answer was option 2. But the committee ordered its deletion. The Bench said the answer key was correct.

Question 77 of BS-6: While the answer key gave option 1, the committee said option 2 was also correct. The single judge ordered awarding of marks for both the answers. However, the Bench said marks should be awarded only for those who shaded option 1.

Question 76 of BS-6: The committee recommended its deletion, saying the construction of the question itself was wrong. But the Bench upheld the single judge's order that the answer key (option 1) was correct.

Question 80 of BS-6: The answer key said it was choice 2, whereas the committee sought to delete the question. While the single judge said marks could be given for all those who opted for choice 1 as well as 2, the Bench found no vagueness in the question and ruled that choice 2 alone be awarded marks. "Choice 1 cannot be given any marks," the judges said.

Question 27 of MA-7: The answer key gave choice 4, but the committee ordered deletion of the question. While the single judge wanted marks given to choices 2, 3 and 4, the Bench agreed with the committee's finding and ordered deletion of the question.

Question 117 of BS-6: The Bench concurred with the paper setter and said, "there was no reason not to accept the answer key as it conforms to the prescribed textbook."

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