Times of India: New Delhi:
Wednesday, May 15, 2013.
The decision
by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to charge Rs 500 to release
photocopy of Optic Magnetic Reader (OMR) sheet, answer key and calculation
sheet of students who appeared for the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) 2013
is not only the violation of RTI Act, but has also come too late.
Answer keys
of JEE (Main) would be released at a time, when the deadline to apply for JEE
(Advanced) got over on May 13. Eligibility for JEE (Advanced) is based on the
performance of a student in JEE (Main). Had the answer key been released
earlier it would have allowed candidates to check the basis of their scores as
well as point out errors in the official answer key. In the past, there have
been reports of wrong answers in the official answer key. But since the key was
released before the result came out corrections could be made. Obtaining a
final JEE rank for admissions in National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and
other Central institutions is based on normalized marks of all the candidates.
Any correction in the JEE marks of a single candidate thereafter, is bound to
affect the result of all candidates.
But CBSE is
following a new trend. Two weeks ago, it allowed students to view their
individual answer key online, but in the absence of official answer key they
didn't know how they have fared. By the time CBSE sends photocopies of OMR
sheet, answer key and calculation sheet of JEE (Main), ranking for admission to
NITs would be finalized. Admission to NITs is on the basis of score in JEE
(Main), while admission to IITs would be on the basis of score in JEE
(Advanced).
As for the
violation of the RTI Act, CBSE has asked students who have already applied for
answer keys through the RTI to reapply by paying Rs 500. RTI Act stipulates
that only Rs 10 can be charged for application and an additional Rs 2 for
photocopying.
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