The Delhi High Court has termed candidates resorting to malpractices and tampering to succeed in competitive examinations "regrettable". The court observed that such actions result in innocent and sincere students falling victim to the disorderly conduct of their colleagues.
The court added that such situations do not leave the state or its agencies with any other option but to cancel the examination altogether. "It is observed that it becomes extremely difficult for the agencies conducting such examinations to determine and identify exactly how many students have engaged in such malpractices and irregularities," Justice Chandra Dhari Singh said, as per a report by PTI.
These observations were made while dismissing a petition by several candidates who applied for the post of Junior Assistant or Office Assistant against vacancies notified by the Delhi Skill Entrepreneurship University (DSEU). However, the examination was cancelled by the university after cases of tampering and use of unfair means were detected in the Computer Based Recruitment Test (CBRT) at two centres.
The petitioners' counsel argued that only a few cases of use of unfair means were detected and therefore, DSEU's action of cancelling the entire exam was arbitrary and unreasonable. The court said that a writ of mandamus, or any other writ, could not be issued in this instant petition, as DSEU was well within its authority when it cancelled the examination process, in order to maintain the sanctity of the same.
"It is a well-settled principle of law that the selection process cannot be tainted. Maintaining the sanctity of the selection process is of utmost importance while conducting an examination of any kind. Any tampering with the same, might result in suffering caused to the candidates who participate in such examination process with honesty, however, there may be certain situations wherein the nature of the irregularities may be varied making it impossible to determine the number of candidates involved in the said irregularity," Justice Singh said.
"It said in the case of CBRT, a computer-based examination was tampered with, which is evident by the two FIRs lodged by DSEU, following which the examination had to be cancelled three times," the court added, and dismissed the petition, as per PTI.
