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CBSE asked to provided answer sheets and scrupulously observe the directions of Supreme Court in C.A. No. 6454 of 2011
Even after the historic 2011 judgment of the Supreme Court, where procuring copies of answer sheets by students came under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) continued to defy it. In a reply to a RTI query, posed by Whistle for Public Interest (WHIP), comprising of a group of law students, the CBSE replied on 28 December 2015, that, it charges Rs700 per subject for providing copy of answer sheets. In addition, students were compulsorily required to go through the process of ‘Verification of Marks’ for which the CBSE has prescribed fee of Rs.300 per subject. This meant that a student had to pay Rs1,000 per subject, if she applied for a copy of the answer sheet.
This was in gross violation of the SC order of 2011, which held that “Answer-Sheet is an Information and therefore, examinees shall have the right to inspect their Answer-Sheets under RTI Act, 2005 and its Rules made there under which prescribes Rs10 as application fee for getting the information and Rs2 per page for the copies of such information.”
The Supreme Court directed the CBSE to “scrupulously observe” the directions made by the Court in 2011. The CBSE has been asked to provide evaluated answer-sheets to candidates under RTI Act in compliance with the Supreme Court’s Ruling in the matter of CBSE & Anr. Vs. Aditya Bandopadhyay & Ors – Civil Appeal No. 6454/2011.
All the state run institutions falling under the meaning of Public Authority defined under section 2(h) of the RTI Act are also obliged to provide answer-sheets under this transparency law.
