The Madras High Court has ordered over 15 candidates, who have filed writ petitions seeking revaluation of their answer scripts in the recently-conducted Civil Judges (Junior Division) examination, to approach it with representations containing their plea. If there is any valid ground for revaluation, the exercise will be undertaken.
Disposing of a batch of writ petitions, a specially-constituted Division Bench said that the petitioners could make a representation before the High Court following which certified copies of the answer scripts would be provided to them. Later, they could make the representations.
Nearly 460 candidates had qualified for viva voce, to be held on May 28, for filling 185 vacancies of Civil Judge (Junior Division.)
The written examinations were conducted on March 24 and 25. As a one-time measure, the selection process was conducted by the Madras High Court, instead of the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission. Of the 10,400 candidates who had applied for the posts, 8,895 were issued hall tickets. Nearly 6702 candidates appeared for the examinations.
In a writ petition, R. Kiruthiga Devi of Anna Nagar East submitted that she enrolled as an advocate in March 2001. She belonged to the Backward Classes. She was not selected for the viva voce because she secured only 31 marks in Law Paper-1, which was four marks short of the minimum to qualify for the interview.
She had written all the examinations well and was expecting higher marks in the subjects.
She had written the translation paper excellently well. Contrary to her expectations, she was awarded only 37 marks in the paper. Still worse, in Law Paper I she had obtained only 31 marks. She was confident of scoring good marks.
She strongly believed that the mistake could have occurred while valuating or totalling the answer paper. She prayed the court for a direction for revaluation and re-totalling of Law Paper-I and the translation paper.
