A good news for students.

The class XII students of Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) can use the Right to Information Act if they want the board to disclose information relating to the question-wise breakup of marks. A ruling by the Central Information Commission dismissed CBSE’s plea that it was exempted from revealing information under the RTI.

CBSE had earlier turned down the plea of a student who wanted a question wise break up of marks of his chemistry paper. The board said that the larger public interest did not warrant the disclosure of information desired by the appellant “In this case, the public information officer could not show any exemption, and therefore the information commission would have no option but to allow giving this info,” says Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi.

So does it set a precedent for other students wanting to know the break up of their marks in various subjects? “If a public information officer wants to deny any information, he will have to quote one of the 10 sections. If the officer can show some justification for applying one of these exemptions, then we would have to look at it,” says Gandhi. The time period for any reply will be 30 days. Meanwhile the CBSE, which wasn’t too keen on parting with information, has to provide answer wise marks to the concerned student by Dec 30 and intimate this to the commission by January 5.

-NKJ

NitiN Kumar Jain

Nitin works in an IT MNC professionally but blogs and owns NKJ Live. He is also the co-owner of a professional start-up ARGHAM BYTES

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