The High Court of Tripura has directed the Teachers Recruitment Board, Tripura (TRBT) to award one additional mark to a candidate of the Teachers Eligibility Test (T-TET) 2024, ruling that the board's decision to change the accepted answer for a repeated question was arbitrary.

A bench headed by Justice Biswajit Palit disposed of the writ petition filed by Rupak Majumder on September 24, 2026 and directed TRBT to declare the petitioner's result afresh within two months.

The petitioner appeared for the T-TET 2024 Paper-I examination and secured 89 marks, falling one mark short of the qualifying threshold. Court records showed the dispute centred on a question asking for the alternative name for the "Anarchic theory of intelligence". The petitioner selected "group factor theory", for which the TRBT awarded no marks.

The petitioner submitted that the identical question appeared in the T-TET 2022 examination, where the TRBT's final answer key recognised "group factor theory" as the correct response. The court observed that the board had not issued any subsequent notification to retract the 2022 answer key, which had attained finality and formed the basis for candidate selections that year.

The court noted that the TRBT was barred by the "principle of estoppels" from taking a different stand in the present examination to the detriment of the candidate. The court relied on a prior judgment dated August 21, 2026, involving a similar petition, which observed that the respondents failed to provide concrete evidence demonstrating how their Expert Committee concluded the previously accepted answer was incorrect.

During the proceedings, the State and TRBT submitted that the examination process was conducted strictly according to the prospectus. According to officials, a three-member Expert Committee reviewed the disputed question and determined the correct option was "None of the above". The respondents also argued that the petitioner had failed to raise an objection within the stipulated timeframe following the release of the tentative answer keys in May 2025.

Dismissing the respondents' submissions, the High Court held that the action of the board was not permissible in the eyes of the law. The court concluded that the TRBT could not arbitrarily deviate from the statement made in its earlier final answer keys.

The board could not immediately be reached for comment on whether it plans to appeal the order.