Shillong Times: Shillong: Wednesday, June 28, 2017.
Editor,
The Right to
Information Act, 2005 (RTI Act) is the most pivotal legislation ensuing to
secure rights of the citizens to have access to information under the control
of public authorities with some exceptions to information which are barred
under the said Act. It is rightly said that an informed citizenry is the
backbone of successful democracy. RTI has been an important tool for the citizen
to be informed about the public affairs thereby promoting accountability and
transparency in the functioning of the government.
When the
RTI is viewed vis-à-vis students, its
scope and ambit has been questioned. There was a time when Boards and Universities
did not allow its students to have access to their own answer scripts even after the declaration of the results.
Such practice continued even after the enforcement of RTI Act, 2005 for the
reason that any move made by the students seeking photocopies of their
respective answer scripts were resisted
by Universities and Boards causing hardship to the aggrieved students and preventing them from availing the remedies against erratic evaluation and
also for re-assessing their performance in improving their answer presentation.
Such a situation had indeed forced some of the students to go for litigation
and the judicial decisions were in their favour.
The Apex
Court in the case of CBSE vs Aditya Bandopadhayay and others observed that the
evaluated answer-sheets are covered under the definition of “information”
[reported in (2011) 8 SCC 497,]. Now the students are entitled to get
photocopies of their answer scripts under the RTI. This would facilitate them
to re-assess their performance and further to improve their performance for
future examination. But the irony that in our state many students are not aware
of this right.
My suggestion
is that the Boards and the Universities functioning in our state may enlighten
the students about their right to get photocopies of their respective answer
scripts by uploading notification in this regard in its official web-site and
also get such information printed at the reverse side of examination admit card
of the students.
Yours etc.,
Aneeta Synrem
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