TAPABRATA CHAKRABORTY, J. - (1.) The petitioners in this public interest litigation allege that the wriggling tentacles of connivance, arbitrariness, interpolation and mismanagement have maligned the entire examination process pertaining to the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examination (Medical and Dental), 2016 (hereinafter referred to as WBJEEM) conducted by the West Bengal Joint Entrance Examinations Board (hereinafter referred to as WBJEEB) and have caused extreme prejudice to the students, whose hard labour of years together to emerge to be successful in WBJEEM stood frustrated and they succumbed to the illegalities perpetrated by the respondents. For redressal of such wrong caused to the candidates at large and in furtherance of the public interest involved, the guardians of some of the said candidates have approached this Court, inter alia, praying for cancellation of the said examination.
(2.) Records reveal that the writ petition was affirmed before this Court in the month of August, 2016. By an order dated 2nd September, 2016 this Court directed the parties to exchange their affidavits but the interim order, as prayed for by the petitioners, to restrain the respondents from counselling and/or taking any further steps pursuant to the merit list and/or the result of WBJEEM was refused. A Special Leave Petition was preferred against such refusal of interim order but the same was dismissed on 16th September, 2016. Thereafter, the matter again appeared before this Court on 2nd December, 2016 when an application for addition of party being CAN 10727 of 2016 was allowed. Thereafter the parties exchanged their affidavits and in the midst thereof two further applications being CAN 3541 of 2017 and 3575 of 2017 were filed in the months of April, 2017 and January, 2017 respectively and the learned advocates appearing for the said applicants were also heard.
(3.) Mr. Bhattacharya, learned senior advocate appearing for the petitioners submits that WBJEEM was conducted by WBJEEB in a most lackadaisical and casual manner. Drawing the attention of this Court to a copy of an Optical Mediated Response Sheet (hereinafter referred to as OMR sheet) at page 56 of the writ petition, he submits that though in the question paper the first 40 questions being serial nos. 1 to 40 were pertaining to the subject of Physics and the next 40 questions being serial nos. 41 to 80 were pertaining to the subject of Chemistry, in the OMR answer sheet the question numbers pertaining to the subject of Physics were printed to be of serial nos. 41 to 80 and the questions pertaining to the subject of Chemistry were also printed to be of serial nos. 41 to 80. Such error totally confused the participating candidates. Only a few minutes prior to commencement of the examination, the invigilators in the examination hall simply asked the students to treat the questions under serial nos. 1 to 40, as printed in the question sheet pertaining to the subject of Physics, to be the same as serial nos. 41 to 80 in the OMR answer sheet and as such the candidates had no choice but to start answering and to complete the examination.;