Ena India: New Delhi: Sunday, August
21, 2016.
The Supreme
Court of India has instructed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)
to follow its 2011 judgment word by word that had directed the CBSE to provide
answer sheets to all the students who have made the demand under the Right to
Information (RTI) Act 2005.
The
instruction has been issued by the court in response to a contempt petition
that was filed by Kumar Shanu and others
through advocate Prashant Bhushan by claiming that students are being asked to
pay as much as Rs. 1000 for obtaining the copies of their answer sheets.
While passing
the instruction the Supreme Court of India observed that it need not proceed
further with the contempt petition as CBSE has given clarification regarding
the fees charged by it for providing the answer sheets.
CBSE in its
response to the contempt petition has said that the reason behind charging fees
is not to earn any benefit nor to deviate from the provisions of the RTI Act.
In the year
2011 the Supreme Court of India had passed a judgment according to which answer
sheets come under the definition of information under the RTI Act and because
of this a student has the right to ask for access to the answer sheets. Further
as per the provisions a student shall have to pay Rs. 10 as application fees
and Rs. 2 per page for the copies of the information being sought.
.JPG)
.JPG)
