The Sunday Guardian: New Delhi: Sunday, June 24, 2018.
Students can
now get access to their answer sheets under RTI Act.
The Central
Information Commission (CIC) has directed the Delhi University (DU) to allow
students in the Law Faculty to access their evaluated answer scripts by way of
filing RTIs. Following a year long dispute between the university and the
students who had approached the CIC to address the matter, the CIC announced
that accessing evaluated answer scripts is a statutory right of a student under
the RTI Act.
Until now,
students had to make a payment of Rs 750 per paper to access a photo copy of
their evaluated answer script; since there are five papers in a semester,
students had to pay over Rs 3,000 to get photo copies of their evaluated answer
scripts which was more than the amount of money paid by students to appear in
examinations, which was around Rs 1,200.
In 2016,
students and the university ended up being at odds when some students requested
for the original copies of their evaluated answer sheets instead of photo
copies, but the university, citing its established procedure, refused to
release the copies.
Mohit Gupta,
a former Law Faculty student involved in the matter then, explained, “The issue
was that we were not sure of the evaluation. We wanted to see for ourselves how
much marks we have been allotted. Some photo copies that were procured from
earlier semester examinations had shown that often there is a calculation
miskate in assessment or some answers are left unmarked etc. We have had
incidents of huge number of students failing in a single semester before.
Mistakes in evaluation have been one of the reasons for that.”
Narvinder
Thakran, another law student, had argued, “The university preserves answer
sheets only for 135 days now. Earlier, it was two years, but the university’s
executive council’s 2011 order reduced the preservation period. On the other
hand, the university provides answer sheets only between 61st and 75th day
after the result is uploaded on the university’s website. This means that by
the time the university will process by request to give me my evaluated answer
script’s photo copy for which I have paid enough money, chances are that the
university might have already discarded it. So, we demanded that answer scripts
should be allowed to be accessed under RTI for which we only have to pay Rs
10.”
The CIC in
its order observed, “Issue under consideration is in larger public interest
affecting the fate of all students who wish to obtain information about their
answer sheets/marks obtained which would understandably have a bearing on their
future and their career prospects which in turn would ostensibly affect their
right to life and livelihood. Hence, they ought to be allowed to inspect their
answer sheets under RTI Act 2005.”
The CIC
further observed that the university’s argument that allowing students to
access their answer sheets would prove unnecessary burden on the public
authority does not hold merit since timely access to information is the essence
of the RTI Act.