Guwahati, May 11: Gauhati High Court has directed the Assam Public Service Commission (APSC) to engage an expert to re-evaluate the answers given by a candidate to five questions in the civil services preliminary examination held last year.

The directive has come after the candidate, Mampi Nath, moved the high court claiming that she was not shortlisted for mains despite answering the questions correctly.

The petitioner submitted in the court that there are discrepancies in the official answers to certain questions in General Studies and Education which affected her total score as a result of which she was declared unsuccessful.

Advocates J. Roy and R. Hazarika appeared on behalf of the petitioner.

The commission, however, submitted that under the rules governing examinations conducted by the APSC, there is no provision for re-examination of answer scripts since the evaluation is done by experienced senior academicians.

The preliminary examination was based on objective-type questions and were required to be answered in OMR (optical-mark reader) pattern.

After hearing both sides, a single-judge bench of Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, in the order passed recently, said: "From a careful perusal of the disputed questions and the answers given by the petitioner vis-à-vis the official answers, prima facie it appears the answers given by the petitioner to two questions of Education appear to be correct."

"So also a question of General Studies. If the answers given by petitioner are accepted as correct, it would have a material bearing on her result," the judge said.

"In such circumstances, the court is of the view that it would meet the ends of justice, if the five disputed questions and the answers given by the petitioner are examined by an expert, whose views may be treated as final," the order said.

The court asked the APSC secretary to place the two answer scripts of the petitioner pertaining to General Studies and Education for scrutiny by an expert to be nominated by the APSC.

The order further stated that the result of the scrutiny shall be made known to the petitioner latest by May 22.

"Needless to say, depending upon the outcome, consequential steps shall be taken," the judge said while disposing of the petition.

The Combined Competitive (Preliminary) Examination, 2014, was held in September 28 last year and the APSC uploaded the answer key of all the subjects on its website on October 29 last year.

From the answer key on the APSC website, the petitioner found certain discrepancies in the official answers to certain questions and submitted a representation (dated November 3, 2014) to the APSC stating that official answer key of General Studies (question numbers 9, 36, 77 and 86) and Education (question numbers 15, 60, 86 and 91) were incorrect while the answers given by her were correct.

The APSC accepted the prayer of the petitioner in respect of question number 86 of General Studies and question numbers 60 and 91 of Education.

The result of the preliminary exam was declared on December 17, 2014.

The petitioner, who was an OBC candidate, was not included in the list of successful candidates. She secured 236 marks whereas the last selected candidate under the OBC category had secured 238 marks. Thus, she fell short by two marks.