In Harjeet Singh Chawla v State of Chhattisgarh & Ors, Chhattisgarh High Court recently held that that a student could not be compelled to accept the result of a re-evaluation of test results that he had not requested, as “a person cannot be compelled to swallow the adverse result of exercise for which he never applied nor consented”.
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Chawla, an LLM student at a state-run university, had received sufficient marks to register for a PhD programme at the university. He subsequently learned that he was ineligible for the programme as a re-evaluation of his LLM test papers had resulted in a downward revision of the marks he had obtained.
After unsuccessfully raising the issue with the vice-chancellor of the university, Chawla filed a writ petition before the high court, seeking the quashing of the amended results. Chawla also petitioned the court to order an enquiry by an independent agency into the incident and to further direct the university to continue employing him as a part-time teacher and to permit him to sit for the PhD examination. He told the court that he had not signed the application for re-evaluation and that it contained a forged signature.
The university had argued that it could not be held liable, as it had acted in good faith on an application filed for re-evaluation. A state examiner of questioned documents who was asked to examine Chawla’s signature on the re-evaluation application told the court that Chawla had neither signed the re-evaluation request form nor completed it.
Quashing the result of the re-evaluation, the court held that a candidate who does not apply for a re-evaluation cannot be compelled to accept marks based on an application filed fraudulently by another person.
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The dispute digest is compiled by Bhasin & Co, Advocates, a corporate law firm based in New Delhi. The authors can be contacted at lbhasin@bhasinco.in or lbhasin@gmail.com. Readers should not act on the basis of this information without seeking professional legal advice.
