Rajasthan High Court: Sangeet Lodha, J. dismissed a writ petition seeking directions to the Board of Secondary Education to permit him to appear for Class XII examination in the subject Geography.
The relevant facts of the case being the petitioner-candidate had appeared in Class XII Board Examinations in 2017 and had passed with First Division. Thereafter, the petitioner had decided to reappear the Class XII examination with a new optional subject Geography. The petitioner was permitted admission and he pursued the course diligently and applied for the examination. The Board accepted his request however, in the admit card, which was issued to him, the subject History was replaced in place of Geography. The coordinate bench of Rajasthan High Court had passed an order allowing the petitioner to appear for the examination without any restrictions.
The counsel representing the petitioner-candidate, Vijay Jain, submitted that the School and the Board did not have the right to restrict the candidate from appearing for the examination since his application to reappear for the examination was already accepted by the Board.
The counsels representing the respondent, Rakesh Aora and Abdul Wahid, contended that the Board has certain prescribed rules and regulations and in accordance to the Board guidelines it has approved the candidate to reappear in the same subjects as his erstwhile examination since the Board cannot issue more than one certificate for one candidate.
Upon hearing the submissions from respective counsels, and perusal of the rules prescribed, the court sought to dismiss the present writ petition since “as per the scheme of the examination, no candidate after passing the Secondary/Senior Secondary Examination is entitled to appear again in the examination while changing the subjects. In other words, if a candidate wants to appear in the examination again for the purpose of improvement of division, he is entitled to do so, but in the same subjects.” Thus, the Board was justified in allowing the candidate to reappear for the examination only for the same subjects as before for the purpose of improvement. It was also noted by the Court that since the candidate had already appeared for the examination relating to the subject of Geography, it shall be cancelled and he shall be allowed to appear for the examination relating to the subject History.[Ramniwas v. State of Rajasthan, 2019 SCC OnLine Raj 2854, decided on 11-09-2019]
