Orissa HC Orders Fresh Interview After FSL Report Reveals Answer Script Tampering in District Judge Recruitment
The Orissa High Court found forensic evidence of mark manipulation in a District Judge written examination, directing a fresh interview for a candidate wrongly excluded from selection.
A Division Bench of the Orissa High Court at Cuttack has directed the Registrar General to arrange a fresh interview for advocate Geetanjali Majhi for the post of District Judge (direct recruitment from the Bar, 2023), after the State Forensic Science Laboratory confirmed that her marks in Paper-III (General English) had been altered by overwriting in different ink. The bench, comprising Justice Manash Ranjan Pathak and Justice Sibo Sankar Mishra, determined that the petitioner had in fact secured 45 marks in that paper—not 42 as uploaded on the court's website—and that she had therefore been wrongly denied a call for interview. The judgment, dated 18 August 2026, is a rare instance of a constitutional court correcting a manipulation in its own recruitment process on the basis of forensic evidence.
The District Judge Recruitment and the Petitioner's Exclusion
On 29 August 2023, the Registrar of Examination, Orissa High Court, issued Advertisement No. 05 of 2023 inviting online applications for 23 posts in the cadre of District Judge by direct entry from the Bar. The posts carried a pay scale of Rs. 1,44,840–Rs. 1,94,660 and the recruitment was to be governed by the Orissa Superior Judicial Service (OSJS) Rules, 2007 and the Orissa Judicial Service (OJS) Rules, 2007 and their subsequent amendments. The last date for receipt of applications was 15 September 2023.
The 23 posts were distributed across categories: 12 unreserved (including 4 for women), 2 SEBC (including 1 for women), 4 SC (including 1 for women), and 5 ST (including 2 for women). Eligibility required a law degree from a recognised university, at least seven years of continuous practice at the Bar as on 1 April 2023, and an age between 35 and 45 years as on that date, with relaxations for SC, ST, SEBC and persons with disabilities.
The written examination consisted of three papers of 100 marks each. Paper-I covered civil procedure, personal law, and property-related legislation. Paper-II covered criminal procedure, penal law, and evidence. Paper-III was General English, testing translation, re-translation, essay, précis, and comprehension. Candidates were required to secure at least 45 per cent in each paper and 50 per cent in aggregate to qualify for interview. The interview carried 30 marks, and candidates had to score at least 40 per cent in the interview to be included in the merit list.
Geetanjali Majhi applied and was allotted Roll No. 88. She appeared in the written examination on 5 November 2023 at Cambridge School, Cantonment Road, Cuttack. The result was published on 8 January 2024 and individual marks on 9 January 2024. She was shown as having scored 65 in Paper-I, 52 in Paper-II, and 42 in Paper-III. Since 42 fell below the 45-mark threshold for Paper-III, she was not called for interview.
The RTI Route and the Discovery of a Discrepancy
Suspecting an error, the petitioner sought her evaluated answer script and the model answer sheet for Paper-III through an RTI application. The SPIO responded on 9 February 2024, directing her to collect the answer script on payment of fee and informing her that the model answer sheet could not be supplied under the Orissa High Court Right to Information Rules, 2005. The answer script was handed over on 13 February 2024.
On examining her script, the petitioner found that she had actually been awarded 45 marks, not 42. She contended that a wrong computation in the tabulation sheet had reduced her score by three marks, and that her aggregate across all three papers consequently stood at 50 per cent—the exact threshold required to qualify for interview.
She filed W.P.(C) No. 4698 of 2024 on 28 February 2024 under Article 226 of the Constitution, praying for correction of her Paper-III score from 42 to 45 and a direction to allow her to participate in the interview.
Proceedings Before the Co-ordinate Bench and the Forensic Direction
A co-ordinate bench of the High Court issued notice to the opposite parties on 5 March 2024. The Registrar General and the Registrar of Examination filed their first counter affidavit on 12 September 2024. They acknowledged that the petitioner had scored 65 and 52 in Papers-I and II respectively, and that 42 marks in Paper-III had disqualified her. They added, however, that if the court were to conclude she had scored 45 in Paper-III and thereby 50 per cent in aggregate, she would become eligible for interview. They also noted that the direct recruitment process for 2023 had been completed and that no candidate had qualified for interview.
The matter was posted before the bench of Justice Dixit Krishna Shripad and Justice Sanjay Kumar Mishra on 18 July 2025. That bench had earlier, on 3 July 2025, noted from page 31 of the petition that the tabulation for Paper-III showed question No. 4 with 12 marks struck off, 9 marks substituted with an initial, and the total oscillating from 55 to 46 to 43 before settling at 42. The bench also observed that in the answer script itself, 10 marks for question No. 4 appeared to have had the ‘0’ changed to ‘2’, yielding 12 marks.
On 18 July 2025, after opening the sealed answer script in open court and perusing it meticulously, the bench recorded a prima facie finding of interpolation—particularly at page 1 of the script—with doubts as to whether the ink and the author of the alterations differed from those of the original evaluation. Because the matter concerned the appointment of a judicial officer in the lower judiciary, the bench directed the Registrar General to refer the original answer script to a forensic examiner with three specific questions: whether there was any interpolation in the pages of the script; whether the original and interpolated writing were by the same author; and whether the ink and pen used by the original evaluator differed from those used for the interpolation. The forensic exercise was to be completed within eight weeks.
The FSL Report and the Court's Findings
The State Forensic Science Laboratory, Odisha, Bhubaneswar submitted its report under Communication No. HW/79/2025/7719 dated 25 August 2025 in a sealed cover. It was placed before the present bench on 21 January 2026 and opened by the Court Master in the judges' presence. The court then directed the report to be resealed and placed before the Registrar General to enable the High Court to engage its own empanelled counsel before the matter proceeded.
On 12 March 2026, the opposite parties filed an additional affidavit. They conceded that when the marks awarded against individual answers in Paper-III were totalled correctly, the petitioner's score came to 45. They attributed the error to a mistake in reflecting marks on the evaluation sheet, and submitted that “the answer script speaks for itself and in the interest of justice, the scores appearing before the individual answers are germane to arrive at the total marks.” They reiterated that with 45 in Paper-III, the petitioner would qualify for interview, having scored 50 per cent in aggregate across all three papers.
The Division Bench, after examining the FSL report, recorded that the marks in Paper-III had been “subsequently changed by overwriting that too in different ink with edition of short signature, indicating that there was manipulation of figure (marks) in different ink as well as overwriting in different ink.” On the question of authorship, the FSL stated it could not express an opinion as the manipulations did not provide sufficient identifiable writing characteristics.
The bench held that the FSL findings established manipulation of the answer script and that the petitioner had secured 45 marks in Paper-III—not 42. Combined with her conceded scores of 65 in Paper-I and 52 in Paper-II, she had crossed both the per-paper threshold of 45 per cent and the aggregate threshold of 50 per cent. The bench concluded that she had been deprived of her right to appear in the interview by way of manipulation.
The Question of Reconstituting the Interview Committee
Senior Counsel for the opposite parties, Mr. Bigyan Kumar Sharma, pointed out that the interview for the District Judge posts had been conducted by a specific committee of judges of the High Court, and that some members of that committee had since retired on attaining the age of superannuation. The court took note of this practical difficulty in the order and addressed it in the directions it issued.
Order
The Division Bench allowed the writ petition. It directed the Registrar General to place the matter before the Chief Justice on the administrative side, and directed that after the Chief Justice constitutes a fresh committee of judges, all necessary steps be taken to conduct the interview of Geetanjali Majhi for the post of District Judge from the Bar, 2023. The entire exercise was directed to be completed within two weeks from 18 August 2026.
No order as to costs was made. The FSL report dated 25 August 2025 was directed to be resealed and handed over to the Registrar General for custody, with acknowledgement to be obtained from that authority.