Gurugram: The Punjab and Haryana High Court has dismissed a review application in a civil judge examination dispute, reaffirming its February 2025 ruling and declining to interfere with the examiner’s evaluation of a descriptive English answer.
A division bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Sumeet Goel dismissed both the review petition and an application seeking condonation of a 260-day gap in filing the review plea by Diksha Kalson, who challenged the evaluation of her answer sheet in the Haryana Civil Service (Judicial Branch) Examination, 2023-24.
The case started in October 2024, when the final results declared Kalson unsuccessful with 493.10 marks. She fell short of the 495-mark cut off for scheduled caste candidates by a mere 1.90 marks.
After obtaining her answer sheets through the Right to Information (RTI) Act, Kalson discovered she was given zero marks for a sentence-making question involving the word “eloquent”.
Her answer read: “Public Officers become so eloquent and poised after going through the training process.”
Convinced her answer was grammatically correct and aligned with standard English, she approached the high court in February last year, seeking re-evaluation and challenging Clause 33 of the recruitment advertisement that prohibited re-evaluation of answer sheets.
Doctrine of estoppel
In its detailed 28 February 2025 order, the high court dismissed her writ petition on multiple grounds.
The bench observed that Kalson had voluntarily participated in the examination process without objecting to the rules, and couldn’t challenge them after an unfavourable result.
The high court, in its February 2025 ruling, invoked the doctrine of estoppel and the Supreme Court’s ruling in the 2019 Dr. (Major) Meeta Sahai vs State of Bihar case.
In this case, the Supreme Court held that the underlying objective of the principle of estoppel is to prevent candidates from attempting another shot at consideration, and to avoid an impasse wherein every disgruntled candidate, having failed the selection, challenges in the hope of getting a second chance.
The doctrine of estoppel is a legal principle that prevents someone from denying a fact or statement they previously asserted through words or conduct.
“The petitioner is indeed seeking this Court to be a super-evaluator, supplanting its view for that of the examiner/expert,” Justice Goel had written in the original order.
The court found no “palpably incorrect or egregious” evaluation that would warrant judicial interference.
The February judgment elaborated on the limited scope of judicial review in subjective examination answers, citing its own 27 February 2025 ruling in the Jasmine vs State of Haryana case.
“The evaluation by an expert/examiner, in context of a subjective/descriptive type of question, ought to be assumed to be correct, unless it is proven to be fundamentally wrong,” the bench had noted.
The court also upheld the validity of Clause 33, stating that selection agencies have the exclusive prerogative to prescribe examination rules and methodologies. Such provisions could only be challenged if found arbitrary, capricious or discriminatory.
None of these had been established by the petitioner, it noted.
Nearly nine months later, Kalson filed the review application, arguing the court hadn’t considered that it had granted re-evaluation directions to another candidate in similar circumstances.
Her counsel, Birinder Pal, contended that fairness demanded a re-evaluation opportunity that would make her eligible by crossing the threshold.
The bench wasn’t impressed.
In its 9 January order, Justice Goel noted that review jurisdiction has an “exceedingly circumscribed” scope under the Civil Procedure Code.
The power exists to correct manifest errors apparent on the record, and not to provide a second shot at arguing settled points.
“Under the thin veil of seeking a review, the applicant has approached this Court to re-adjudicate the very lis (Latin word for suit) on its substantive merits,” the bench observed, calling such an approach “patently impermissible”.
The 260-day delay proved equally fatal. The court found no satisfactory explanation for the protracted gap, describing it as “a deliberate attempt on the part of the review-applicant/petitioner to protract the proceedings”.
Balvinder Sangwan, appearing for the Haryana Public Service Commission, opposed the review application, arguing it amounted to recalling a well-considered judgment and fell outside the review jurisdiction scope.
The bench invoked Latin maxims Interest reipublicae ut sit finis litium (it is in the public interest that there be an end to litigation) and Res judicata pro veritate accipitur (a decided matter is taken for truth) to drive home its point.
Both applications were dismissed without costs on 9 January, with the order uploaded three days later.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)