Ahmedabad: In a significant relief to a Gujarat Public Service Commission (GPSC) aspirant who missed qualifying for the next stage of a recruitment process by just one mark, the Gujarat high court on Friday directed the commission to award her a mark for a disputed question on Kautilya’s Arthashastra.The court held that candidate Arti Rangpariya’s answer was correct as it was supported by NCERT and GCERT textbooks, while the source relied upon by GPSC for framing the question was “unauthenticated”.The dispute pertained to Question No. 147 in a GPSC examination conducted last year. Candidates were asked to assess the correctness of two statements regarding Arthashastra: that the book was written in Sanskrit and that it was a book on economics. Rangpariya marked both statements as correct.GPSC, however, maintained that only the first statement was correct, arguing that Arthashastra dealt not only with economics but also politics and administration. As a result, the candidate lost a mark and fell short of the qualifying cut-off by one mark.During the hearing, the court repeatedly questioned GPSC over the source material used for the question. The commission relied on a PDF version of a 1915 translation of Arthashastra available on a political party’s website. The document was not available to candidates and GPSC was unable to place the original edition before the court despite being directed to furnish a copy.On the other hand, counsels for the petitioner, Megha Jani and Mit Thakkar, argued that the candidate’s answer was supported by textbooks prescribed by the Gujarat Council of Educational Research and Training (GCERT) and the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).Allowing the petition, Justice Nirzar Desai stated, “The respondents are directed to consider the answer given by the petitioner as correct answer in view of the fact that the authenticity of material on which the question was asked was unauthenticated material, as well as considering the fact that in GCERT and NCERT textbooks, Kautilya’s Arthashastra is about economics as well, and therefore petitioner’s answer is said to be a correct answer.”The court directed GPSC not to deduct the disputed mark and to recalculate the candidate’s score by treating her answer as correct. It also ordered the authorities to extend all consequential benefits arising from the revised score.The high court further rejected the state government’s request to stay the order for four weeks. During the proceedings, the government informed the court that one seat in the recruitment process had been kept vacant.
