In a writ petition filed before the Delhi High Court seeking an order to declare the decision of the Registrar General, High Court of Delhi, by a notice dated 12-08-2026, to retain the existing answer key entries in respect of Questions 65, 73, and 81 of the booklet series ‘B’ of the Delhi Higher Judicial Services Preliminary Examination, 2026 held on 26-07-2026 to be legally unsustainable and to direct the Registrar General to correct the said answer key entries or to delete the defective questions, a Division Bench of Justice V. Kameswar Rao and Justice Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora dismissed the petition for lacking merit.
Pursuant to objections received to the model answer keys, the respondent decided to delete 11 questions of the said examination. The answer key to all other questions was held to be correct. Thereafter, the petitioner’s marks were declared as 70.50, which fell short of the cut off mark for enabling a candidate to sit in the Mains examination.
The petitioner submitted that the Question no. 65 was contrary to the statutory text of Section 343(2)(a) of the Bhartiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (BNSS), as the provision expressly referred to offences triable exclusively by a Court of Session and also by a Special Judge appointed under any other law for the time being in force, whereas option no. 2, adopted as correct by the respondent, referred only to offences triable exclusively by the Court of Sessions and omitted the Special Judge category. The petitioner had specifically brought this error to the respondent’s notice and identified ‘none of the above’ as the correct response.
The respondent contested this submission, stating that though Section 343(2)(a) of BNSS also referred to a Special Judge, the word Special Judge was specifically omitted from the question, and since the question referred to offences triable exclusively by a Court of Session, the answer necessarily had to be option no. 2. The Court agreed with the respondent, holding that among the available four options, the closest correct answer was option no. 2, and rejected the challenge qua question no. 65.
Regarding Question no. 73, the petitioner submitted that the question was incomplete and incapable of yielding a correct answer, as it merely posited that when an offence under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 was committed by a child, which Court would be competent to try the case, without identifying the particular POCSO offence, its category, the age of the child, the punishment prescribed, or its classification under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015. The respondent contended that the petitioner’s submission was based on a misreading of the JJ Act, and that the competent forum for offences committed by a child less than sixteen years of age was the Juvenile Justice Board, with reference to the Children’s Court arising only in certain eventualities like under Section 15 and Section 18 of the JJ Act. The Court agreed with the respondent, holding that since the offence was stated to be under the POCSO Act, the competent Court would be the Children’s Court, and rejected the objection to this question as well.
On Question no. 81, the petitioner submitted that the question was contrary to law declared by the Supreme Court, as the respondent had treated the proposition that identification of an accused in court has no value in the eyes of law in the absence of prior Test Identification Parade (TIP) as the correct answer, whereas the question expressly stated that the witness identified the accused person in a police station and subsequently identified the accused in Court during trial. The Court disagreed, finding that the question stated that the persons accused of the offence were unknown offenders, unlike in the judgments relied upon by the petitioner, where the accused persons were in acquaintance with the victim, and it was in that context that it was held that failure to hold a TIP would not make evidence of identification in Court inadmissible.
Referring to Malkhansingh & Ors. v. State of MP (2003) 5 SCC 746, which stated that much evidentiary value cannot be attached to identification of the accused in court where the identifying witness is a total stranger who had just a fleeting glimpse of the person identified, and also to V. C. Shukla v. State (Delhi Administration) (1980) 2 SCC 665 while holding that identification for the first time in court without being tested by a prior test identification parade was valueless. The Court accordingly rejected the petitioner’s submission with respect to question no. 81.
Thus, while dismissing the petition, the Court held that the pleas raised by the petitioner were unsustainable and without merit.
