Moneylife: Pune: Friday, 18 July 2025.
Isn’t it natural that when you get your mark sheet, you get to see your marks? Well, the internationally acclaimed Savitribai Phule University Pune (SBUP) provides only credits and grades and it is the marks ledger in which the marks are provided.
So what’s the controversy?
In a bizarre state of affairs, a private law college in Pune (name undisclosed
at request of the RTI applicant) refused to provide Ganesh Chavan, a third-year
law student, his own marks ledger. Thus began his fight for transparency as,
without it, his opportunity for internship remains bleak, as his academic
performance would be unable to be precisely assessed by the potential employer.
His, he says, is not a freak case but claims it is affecting thousands of
students. In the same vein, several other colleges, which he checked, do
provide the student with the marks ledger.
Mr Chavan, a former IT employee who has given up his job to pursue social and community good through right to information (RTI), began his transparency journey by filing RTIs for his village Madha in Solapur district. The arterial road was pending for four decades but after he used RTI and pursued it with the authorities, the road was built a few years back and resembles a highway. Similarly, he used the RTI route to get two state transport (ST) buses for travel to and from Madha-Solapur as, without this transport, the villagers were highly inconvenienced.
He approached the college authorities in mid-February this year after his third-semester results were out on 2nd January. He was told that the marks ledger could not be provided to him. Shocked that his own academic performance could be “confidential” he filed an RTI with SPPU University on 21st February. However, the public information officer (PIO) responded vaguely, stating the information was confidential without citing any specific exemption clause under section 8 of the RTI Act.
On 28th February, the RTI was forwarded to the examination department and the college under the clause of ‘third party clearance’ but there was no reply. His first appeal to the university also drew a blank as strangely the first appellate authority (FAA) upheld the PIO’s reply, denying him information on the grounds of a fiduciary relationship too, besides confidentiality.
On 4th April, Mr Chavan then filed a complaint with the information commissioner, Pune zone, Maharashtra state information commissioner (SCIC) and the central information commissioner (CIC) but he has not received any response. He has appealed for immediate relief to his appeal of expediting the matter as his job opportunity is at stake.
Distressed at the delay, Mr Chavan has launched an online petition titled “Provide Individual Marks Ledger Through Student Identity Manager Portal of SPPU” this week.
The following arethe high points of his petition:
Isn’t it natural that when you get your mark sheet, you get to see your marks? Well, the internationally acclaimed Savitribai Phule University Pune (SBUP) provides only credits and grades and it is the marks ledger in which the marks are provided.
Mr Chavan, a former IT employee who has given up his job to pursue social and community good through right to information (RTI), began his transparency journey by filing RTIs for his village Madha in Solapur district. The arterial road was pending for four decades but after he used RTI and pursued it with the authorities, the road was built a few years back and resembles a highway. Similarly, he used the RTI route to get two state transport (ST) buses for travel to and from Madha-Solapur as, without this transport, the villagers were highly inconvenienced.
He approached the college authorities in mid-February this year after his third-semester results were out on 2nd January. He was told that the marks ledger could not be provided to him. Shocked that his own academic performance could be “confidential” he filed an RTI with SPPU University on 21st February. However, the public information officer (PIO) responded vaguely, stating the information was confidential without citing any specific exemption clause under section 8 of the RTI Act.
On 28th February, the RTI was forwarded to the examination department and the college under the clause of ‘third party clearance’ but there was no reply. His first appeal to the university also drew a blank as strangely the first appellate authority (FAA) upheld the PIO’s reply, denying him information on the grounds of a fiduciary relationship too, besides confidentiality.
On 4th April, Mr Chavan then filed a complaint with the information commissioner, Pune zone, Maharashtra state information commissioner (SCIC) and the central information commissioner (CIC) but he has not received any response. He has appealed for immediate relief to his appeal of expediting the matter as his job opportunity is at stake.
Distressed at the delay, Mr Chavan has launched an online petition titled “Provide Individual Marks Ledger Through Student Identity Manager Portal of SPPU” this week.
The following arethe high points of his petition:
- Who is impacted? : Thousands of students across Maharashtra studying in SPPU-affiliated colleges are affected. With no direct access through the university’s student identity manager (SIM) portal, students are forced to rely on college administration often a bottleneck riddled with delays, inefficiencies and red tape.
- What’s at stake? : The lack of access leads to missed job and educational opportunities. Students cannot verify evaluation errors, leading to unresolved discrepancies. This issue hits hardest in rural and under-resourced colleges, where physical follow-ups are time-consuming and sometimes unaffordable.
- What’s the solution? : Making marks ledgers available digitally through the SIM portal would mean transparency, quicker turnaround for students, reduced burden on college administrators, and restoration of trust in the university’s functioning.
- Why now? : As most Indian universities move toward digitisation and student-friendly transparency policies, SPPU risks lagging behind. The infrastructure already exists in the form of the SIM portal; only the implementation of this reform is pending. “This is not a luxury, it is a necessity,” argues Mr Chavan and adds, “Students must not be forced to beg for their own marks. It is time for the university to modernise and empower students with direct access to what rightfully belongs to them.”
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