Allahabad HC junks plea for permission to rectify application forms for asst teachers exam

The Allahabad High Court has dismissed a bunch of pleas for direction to state authorities to let petitioners rectify their incorrect entries in their online application forms for assistant teachers recruitment exam held in 2019 for selection of 69,000 teachers in Uttar Pradesh. Justice Prakash Padia gave the ruling on May 30, dismissing pleas by aspirant Ashutosh Kumar Srivastava and 60 others on May 30 last. A different Lucknow bench of the court had on Wednesday stayed the appointment of 69,000 assistant basic teachers in Uttar Pradesh, holding that there has been an 'error' in the evaluation of question paper.

Dismissing applicants’ plea to given them an opportunity to rectify the errors in their application forms, submitted online, Justice Padia on May 30 ruled, "The error committed by candidates cannot be said to be human in nature. The petitioners should have read the instructions issued time and again and should have correctly filled the entries relating to the marks obtained by them in their previous examinations.”

“The contention that this was an error committed by the computer operator cannot simply be accepted. If the courts were to accept such pleas of petitioners, it would result in a situation where the petitioners would get the benefit of a wrong had it gone unnoticed and if noticed, the petitioners could have always turned around and claim that this was a result of a human error,” the bench added. “Each candidate necessarily must bear the consequences of his failure to fill up the application form correctly. From perusal of the record, I am of the opinion that the error/errors committed by petitioners are neither minor nor human error/errors," the court said.

Competitive examinations are required to be conducted by the commission for public service in strict secrecy to get best brains, the bench observed, adding the instructions in answer sheets must be complied with in letter and spirit. As per the facts of the case, the petitioners had applied for assistant teacher recruitment examination, 2019 and had duly appeared in the examination on January 6, 2019, while its result was declared on May 12, 2020 in which all petitioners were declared qualified having obtained the prescribed qualifying marks.

The petitioners, however, had claimed that they had committed some “human errors” in entering their B Ed marks inclusive of its theory and practical papers. The counsel for petitioners had argued that the aforesaid human errors crept in the online application forms of petitioners submitted by them online at the official website of the respondents. It was further argued that the mistakes committed by the petitioners are only human error but the same was not been accepted by the bench.