The Supreme Court has recently asked the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to “carefully” follow the 2011 judgment that it is a student’s “fundamental and legitimate right” to further access his answer sheets under the Right to Information Act.
Students
This recent order by a Bench, which was led by Justice Ranjan Gogoi had come on a plea by two students, Kumar Shanu from Noida and Paras Jain from Delhi, who had wanted court’s permission to initiate contempt proceedings, which was against the Board for charging Rs.700 per copy of an answer sheet.
Over this, students are bound by a compulsory process of verification of marks for which they have to pay another Rs. 300 as fee. Only after that, they would they be eligible to further apply for a copy of their answer sheets.
They had contended that a student ends up paying Rs. 1,000 to the CBSE, in order to obtain a physical copy of their answer sheet. The information came out in a reply from the CBSE to an RTI application, which was made by the petitioners. However, the CBSE contended that the charges levied were incidental and not for profit.
The petitioners contended that the practice is a contempt of a 2011 judgment — CBSE & Anr. Vs. Aditya Bandhopadhyay & Ors — of the Supreme Court, which had held that an “answer sheet is the information under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act and therefore, students have a fundamental and a legal right of having an access to their answer sheets under RTI Act.”
