The Delhi Judicial Service (DJS) 2014 exam’s results were turned on their head by retired Supreme Court judge PV Reddy’s committee, after almost all of the top 200-ranked candidates’ marks in the exam increased on re-evaluation.

In addition to the 15 candidates who had qualified for the DJS recruitment interview on its original evaluation, 12 more candidates crossed the exam’s fixed cut-off of 425 marks for the recruitment interview, after re-evaluation by Reddy’s committee, confirmed the petitioner - Centre for Public Interest Litigation’s (CPIL) counsel Prashant Bhushan’s chamber associate advocate Rohit Singh.

The revised results were annexed to a report prepared by Reddy that was submitted in a sealed cover to a Supreme Court bench of justices Dipak Misra and Shiva Kirti Singh today. The counsels for either side were not given a copy of the report by the bench but were allowed to examine it later, in court, in the presence of the courtmasters.

Supreme Court advocate-on-record ADN Rao, who was appearing for the Delhi high court, and Singh examined the report in court.

Initial news reports of today’s proceedings in the case suggested that Reddy found the evaluation of the exam to be “prima facie” fair.

But Singh told Legally India that the marks of almost all of the top 100-ranked candidates of the DJS 2014 mains examination were increased, and most of the next 50-ranked candidates also got additional marks on re-evaluation.

He said that Reddy had, however, concluded in his report that nothing was wrong with the process and methodology of evaluation of the Delhi high court, and it was probably due to a time constraint, and there being a subjective question paper, as well as due to stringent evaluation standards that many candidates failed the exam.

The case is posted for a hearing next on 10 March.

The bench had appointed Reddy, on 14 December, to corroborate the exam results within six weeks. Allegations surrounding the exam included a breakdown of the toppers of the exam, the number of candidates who failed and a series of other discrepancies unearthed by candidates, as reported by Legally India.

The bench had also clarified that the results of the 15 selected candidates were outside the scope of the re-evaluation and that their status would not be unsettled.