UPSC Exam 2023: Delhi High Court dismisses plea alleging that questions in CSAT were Class XI, XII level

The Delhi High Court recently dismissed a petition alleging that a large number of questions in the Civil Services Aptitude Test (CSAT) held by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in May were out of syllabus. [Siddharth Mishra & Ors v. Union Public Service Commission].The Court reiterated that the decision regarding the selection of questions in a paper necessarily remains in the exclusive domain of a panel of academic experts..A Division Bench of Justices V Kameswar Rao and Anoop Kumar Mendiratta added that such a decision cannot be assailed in judicial review only on the ground that some questions were out of syllabus. “The only ground set up by the petitioners to attack the question paper is that some questions were of Class XI & XII level. Suffice it to state, the decision as to what questions need to be included in the paper, and what should be the nature and complexion of such questions, necessarily remains in the exclusive domain of the panel of academic experts,” the order stated..The petition before the Court challenged an August 4 Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) order dismissing a plea by civil service aspirants to reduce the cut-off for qualifying General Studies Paper II of the exam (CSAT) from 33 per cent to 23 per cent.It had been argued before the Tribunal that the syllabus for the CSAT is supposed to be of Class X level. However, many questions asked in the paper related to permutations and combinations, which is not a subject taught in Class X. The plea added that “the questions generally were those put forth to evaluate the candidates for admission in higher engineering institutions like IITs, etc.”However, the UPSC countered that the question paper for CSAT was set up by a committee of experts and their wisdom and knowledge cannot be questioned in a legal forum through judicial review..Counsel representing the aspirants argued before the High Court that there was no level-playing field for persons with a humanities background, as opposed to candidates from a science background.However, the Court, on a query, found that some of the petitioners were from an engineering and mathematics background.“If that be so, the case set up by the petitioners that they did not have a level playing field in the CSAT Exam, cannot be accepted,” the Bench said.The Court proceeded to opine, while dismissing the plea,“This Court cannot sit in appeal against the considered decision of such a panel of academic experts, unless such decision is demonstrated to be manifestly arbitrary, malafide or illegal. Such is not the case here.".Advocates Saaket Jain and Shivangi Anand represented the petitioners.Advocates Naresh Kaushik, Shauryanker Kaushik and Shikha John represented the UPSC..[Read order]