BHAGABATI PRASAD BANERJEE, J. - (1.) A writ application was moved by a girl student who appeared at Higher Secondary Examination conducted by the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education in the year 1990 in which she appeared in all the papers, but ultimately her examination was cancelled by the Council on the basis of the recommendation made by the Mal practices Enquiry Committee whereupon the learned trial Judge passed an order whereby the Council was directed to publish the result of the writ petitioner and directed that any of the colleges governed and managed by the State or affiliated to the Calcutta University to admit the petitioner presumably because of the fact that the writ petition would be kept pending in this Court for several years and during the pendency of the writ application, petitioner's interest should fully by protected inasmuch as she was allowed to prosecute her study on condition that publication of the result and her admission into a college will be subject to the result of the writ application. In other words, if the writ petition fails, in that event publication of result will fall through and in that event admission in college will also be set at naught. Against the interim order passed by the learned trial Judge in the manner indicated above, an appeal was preferred by the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education and applied for stay of operation of the order passed by the learned trial Judge. The matter came up before us on 31/01/1991 when the learned counsel for the parties agreed that instead of disposing of the stay application and the appeal, the writ application should be heard and disposed of expeditiously by this bench as both the parties were anxious for the ultimate results in the writ petition. Under such circumstances, this Court decided to hear out the writ application which had to be ultimately disposed of, to put an end of a litigation which would take in normal course years as against the disposal of the writ petition by a single Judge and appeal lies to the Division Bench. This was done by consent of parties. Accordingly, while hearing of the appeal and disposal of the same we have to dispose of the main writ application on merit so that matter may not drag long.
(2.) The fact of the case in short is that the petitioner was duly permitted to appear in the higher secondary examination and as a matter of fact she appeared in all papers. Her seat for holding examination was allotted to Bagbazar Multipurpose Girls' School. She was a student of Betune Collegiate School with Mathematics as an additional and optional subject.
(3.) Before we enter into the controversy it must be placed at the very outset that an additional and/or optional paper is not compulsorily to be taken by a student and the only thing is that if any mark in additional and/or optional paper above 40% are added with the grand total for the purpose of division. If any candidate fails in the additional paper or does not appear in that paper that does not affect the result of examination at all as he has to pass in all the compulsory papers and has to get pass marks in the compulsory papers.;