Standard normalization procedures in multi-shift examinations are legally valid and immune from judicial interference.

The petitioner appeared for an examination conducted by the Professional Examination Board, Madhya Pradesh.

He was awarded 89.52 marks after the normalization process was applied.

The petitioner approached the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution, seeking a direction to the respondent to round off his marks to 90.00 based on the law cited in his representations.

The court noted that the core controversy regarding the adjustment of marks post-normalization had been previously adjudicated in Lakhan Singh v. State of M.P. (W.P. No. 3826/2018).

In that precedent, a candidate's raw marks of 74 were reduced to 71.89 following normalization, which the court upheld.

1. Whether the respondent is legally obligated to round off the petitioner’s normalized marks from 89.52 to 90.00.

2. Whether the normalization process adopted by the Professional Examination Board for multi-shift examinations is valid and beyond judicial interference.

The court primarily applied Clause 2.13 (b) of the examination rule book, which prescribes the normalization of marks for examinations conducted in multi-shifts.

The court relied on the precedent of Manoj Choudhary & Others v. Home Department (Police) & Others (W.P. No. 8083/2016), which established that normalization is a standard, scientifically accepted process used by institutions like IITs and IIMs to ensure parity when different question sets are used.

The court further upheld the principle that expert committee decisions regarding model answer keys and technical evaluation processes should not be disturbed unless proven arbitrary.

The court reasoned that because the examination was conducted across multiple shifts, the use of a normalization formula was mandatory under Clause 2.13 (b) of the rule book to maintain fairness.

The court referred to a detailed technical report from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore, which had previously scrutinized the Board’s normalization methodology and found no defects.

The court observed that the petitioner’s demand to round off his marks to 90.00 was inconsistent with the established scientific process of normalization, which often results in fractional scores.

Since the normalization process is standard and had been judicially vetted in previous cases, the court found that the final score awarded by the Board was correct and did not warrant interference under Article 226.

As the petitioner failed to rebut the technical validity of the process, the court found no grounds to grant the relief.

Following the ratio in Lakhan Singh v. State of M.P. and Manoj Choudhary v. Home Department, the court held that the petitioner is not entitled to have his marks rounded off or manually adjusted.

The writ petition was dismissed.