Central Board of Secondary Education & Anr. Vs. Aditya Bandopadhyay & Ors.

The Supreme Court on August 9th held that students have the right to  inspect and photocopy their answer sheets after their evaluation under the Right To Information (RTI) Act.

The apex court pronounced its verdict saying that evaluated answer sheets do come under the definition of "information" and reiterated the duty of the public authority under the transparency law to allow maximum disclosure as envisaged by the RTI Act. The apex court bench of Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice A.K. Patnaik allowed the disclosure of the answer sheets of the examination conducted by boards, universities, institutions and public service commissions,it upheld the Calcutta High Court judgment that permitted the students to inspect their answer sheets.

The case reached the apex court from high court which by its March 28, 2008, judgment permitted a student, Pritam Rooj,to inspect his answer sheets.Pritam was a student of mathematics in the Presidency College.In 2006, when he sat for the first part of degree examination he secured 52 percent marks. In the second year he got 208 out of 400 marks and got just 28 marks out of 100 in fifth papers. Upon seeking re-evaluation, his marks increased by four in the fifth paper. He contended that his poor marks stood in the way of his getting admission in post-graduation course and applied to inspect his mark sheet under the RTI law which was rejected.

The university said that the answer sheets of an examinee cannot be shared. The high court over-ruled it. The order was challenged in apex court by the CBSE and the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, among others.

Passing the path-breaking order dismissed a bunch of appeals filed by the Central Board of Secondary Education, West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), University of Calcutta, West Bengal Central School Services Commission and Assam Public Services Commission who had challenged the Judgement of the High Court.The basic contention of all these education boards, Calcutta University and ICAI was that there was a fiduciary relationship between the examiner and the board, and hence it was not proper to show the answer-sheet to the student. CBSE had claimed exemption from the ambit of RTI Act.

The Supreme Court held that evaluated answer-sheets were covered under the definition of “information” under the RTI Act, 2005 and reiterated the duty of the public authority to allow maximum disclosure as envisaged by the RTI. Explaining the scope of the ‘fiduciary relationship’ of the agency holding the examination, the Bench held that bodies conducting examinations could not retain evaluated answer sheets in any fiduciary capacity and contend that they would not disclose the same.