The Orissa High Court has ruled that the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) must compensate an exam candidate for mistakes made during the evaluation of her answer scripts. Jyotirmayee Dutta, who sat for the Odisha Judicial Service Examination in September 2023, will receive Rs 1 lakh due to the oversight which impacted her scores.
Dutta narrowly missed advancing to the document verification and interview stage of the examination by just five marks. She discovered that her response to a question on the Law of Property exam was not assessed, and she felt that the marks received for other answers were unjustly low. This prompted her to seek a judicial review and re-evaluation of her answers.
Complying with her request, the High Court ordered an independent re-assessment of Dutta’s answer sheet by academic experts from three distinguished universities in Odisha. This review revealed that indeed one of her answers had been mistakenly overlooked in the original marking. Corrective marks were awarded for the oversight, but even then, her total did not meet the threshold required to progress to the subsequent phase of the examination process.
The division bench, including Justices Sangam Kumar Sahoo and Chittaranjan Dash, recognized the “mental trauma and financial burden” Dutta endured due to this error. They stated, “Considering the mental trauma and financial burden endured by the petitioner in pursuing this case, we deem it appropriate to award Rs 1 lakh as compensation.”
The court emphasized the significant role competitive exams play in shaping careers, noting they involve “years of rigorous preparation, financial investments, and personal sacrifices.” The justices highlighted the need for “the highest level of scrutiny and quality control measures” in the evaluation process to prevent such errors in the future.
