Live Law: National: Thursday, June 21, 2018.
The Central
Information Commission (CIC) recently held that an examinee holds the right to
inspect his own answer sheets under the Right to Information Act, 2015, relying
on the Supreme Court decision in the case of CBSE and Anr. v. Aditya Bandopadhy
and Ors.
The Supreme
Court had, in Aditya Bandhopadhyay’s case, ruled that an answer-sheet would
fall under the ambit of ‘information’ under Section 2(f) of the Act, ruling
that students have a fundamental and legal right to access their evaluated answer-sheets
under the Act.
The Apex
Court had observed, “When a candidate participates in an examination and writes
his answers in an answer book and submits it to the examining body for
evaluation and declaration of the result, the answer book is a document or
record. When the answer book is evaluated by an examiner appointed by the
examining body, the evaluated answer book becomes a record containing the
`opinion’ of the examiner. Therefore the evaluated answer book is also an ‘information’
under the RTI Act.”
Acknowledging
this decision, Information Commissioner Bimal Julka now ruled, “Moreover, the
Commission felt that issue under consideration involved Larger Public Interest
affecting the fate of all the students who wish to obtain information regarding
their answer sheet/ marks obtained by them which would understandably have a
bearing on their future career prospects which in turn would ostensibly affect
their right to life and livelihood. Hence allowing inspection of their own
answer sheet to the the students ought to be allowed as per the provisions of the
RTI Act, 2005.”
The CIC was
hearing an Appeal filed by Advocate Mohit Kumar Gupta, who had, among other
things, sought disclosure of his answer scripts for his Semester IV LL.B.
Examination. Delhi University (DU) had contested the appeal asserting that
inspection of files would render meaningless their own mechanism of providing
certified copy of answer scripts on payment of fee.
DU had
further submitted that this would make the process cumbersome, as it would have
to maintain two separate mechanisms- one for providing hard copies under their
own regulations, and another for inspection of answer sheets under the RTI Act.
The CIC however dismissed this contention observing that timely access to
information is the essence of the RTI Act, and hence, denial of information on
such grounds would “prejudice a student’s future career prospects and right to
his/ her livelihood”.
It further
rejected the concerns raised by the varsity that candidates could misuse the
inspection process to take digital images of their answer scripts, opining that
“the same could be dealt with by the Respondent Public Authority
appropriately”.
The CIC also
took note of the matter titled ICSI v. Paras Jain, SLP (No) 12692/2014, wherein
the Apex Court is concerned with payment of charges as prescribed under the Act
or as per the rules framed by the concerned institution. It, however, opined
that the issue of allowing inspection of answer sheets was entirely different
from the issue pending before the Supreme Court. It reasoned that Rule 4 of the
RTI Rules, 2012 prescribes separate fee for obtaining hard copy of a document/
record, and for inspection of records.
It then
allowed the appeal with a direction to DU to allow inspection of Mr. Gupta’s answer
sheets within 15 days.
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