- (1.) The writ petitioner, having cleared Higher Secondary Examination in the year 2010 appeared in the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination conducted by the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board, being the respondent No. 1. Through this examination students are admitted in different Colleges in this State. The eligibility criteria for admission in different Engineering/Technology institutions is minimum 50% marks in average in three science subjects, being Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics in the Higher Secondary Examination, The writ petitioner obtained 149 marks in these three subjects taken together. Thus the petitioner obtained, the 49.66 per cent approximately in these three subjects. The petitioner, however, has made out a case that since the decimal fraction is greater that 5 in his case, the marks obtained by him should be-treated to be 50% obtained by him. According Mr. Banerjee learned Advocate for the petitioner, this is an elementary principle of mathematics. He has relied on a school level textbook on the subject by Keshab Chandra Nag, entitled "Modern Mathematics" published by Nag Publishing House, the edition being of January 2006. This principle has been elucidated in this publication as:- 7.12. Approximate value of a decimal fraction. If we are to find the approximate value of a decimal fraction to a certain place of decimals we should write all the digits upto that place and reject the following digits, but we should increase that last digit retained by 1 if the first digit rejected by 5 or greater than 5. Thus, 3.65038=4, correct to the integer (here the first digit rejected after the units' place is 6 which is greater than 5, so 1 is added to the whole number 3 to make the approximate value 4.) Similarly, 3.65038=3.7 correct to one place of decimals =3.65 correct to two places of decimals =3.650 correct to three places of decimals =3.6504 correct to four places of decimals.
(2.) Mr. Bandopadhyay, learned Counsel appearing for the petitioner has also relied on a decision of the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the case of State of U.P. & Anr. vs. Pawan Kumar Tiwari & Ors., 2005 2 SCC 10, In this judgment it has been held that: The High Court has found mainly two faults with the process adopted by the State Government. First, the figure, of 46.50 should have been rounded off to 47 and not to 46: and secondly, in the category of freedom fighters and ex-servicemen, total 3 posts have been earmarked as horizontally reserved by inserting such reservation into general quota of 46 posts which had the effect of pushing out of selection zone three candidates from the merit list of general category. We do not find fault with any of the two reasoning adopted by the High Court. The rule of rounding off based on logic and common sense it: if part is one-half or more, its value shall be increased to one and if part is less than half then its value shall be ignored. 46.50 should have been rounded off to 47 and not to 46 as has been done. If 47 candidates would have been considered for selection in general category, the respondent was sure to find a place in the list of selected meritorious candidates and hence entitled to appointment.
(3.) Appearing on behalf of the Board, Mr. Mukhopadhyay, learned Counsel submitted on instruction that the stand taken by his client in rejecting the petitioner's candidature on the ground of failure to fulfil the eligibility criteria was incorrect. In fact, in course of his submission he has taken a very fair stand and accepted this principle general mathematics on the aspect of rounding off of decimal fraction.;