HC: Can’t intervene in a purely academic matter

Kochi: The high court has held that it cannot review the accuracy of the answer keys in the examination as it was purely an academic matter. A bench of Justice T R Ravi was considering a petition challenging the accuracy of the answer key of the UGC/NET exam.
The petitioner had previously approached the HC, alleging numerous anomalies in the UGC/NET exams conducted in Dec 2020 and June 2021.The high court had disposed of the petition by directing the UGC to address the petitioner’s grievances. Consequently, the National Testing Agency established a three-member expert committee to review the answer key, which ultimately rejected the petitioner’s claims.

Following this, the petitioner filed another petition challenging the decision of the expert committee and the UGC. However, the single bench dismissed the petition, stating that the court could not act as an appellate authority over the decision of a subject expert committee as it pertained solely to academic matters. It was also noted that in the absence of malice, favouritism, arbitrariness, irrationality, or perversity, there was no justification for the court to intervene in the decision-making process or the decision itself.