Central Board of Secondary Education has declared Class 12 results 2017 and is likely to announce class 10 results on June 2. Students of government run institutions including CBSE who have passed the exams or even failed in the recently concluded exams can receive a copy of their evaluated answer sheets under the Right To Information Act. Moreover, the RTI query will cost the students only Rs 10. It’s a far cry from the usual CBSE procedure where an applicant seeking evaluated ansher sheet have to dish out as much as Rs 1200.
Earlier, CBSE was not in favour of the RTI route. The education board had clearly mentioned in its guidelines that “no request for RTI for providing of photocopy of evaluated answer book will be accepted”. However, it was after a Supreme Court ruling in 2016, CBSE omitted the RTI reference from its guidelines.
CBSE’s 2015 notification clearly states that RTI applications will not be accepted for provision of evaluated answer booklets. It was a clear violation of the apex court’s 2011 order. However, after SC’s reprimand in 2016 CBSE omitted any mention of RTI applications completely in its notification. But students were still not aware of the development and did not know about an affordable mean to apply for their evaluated answer sheets.
The apex Court’s 2011 judgement said that evaluated answer papers of candidates are information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. In other words, students are within their right to access evaluated answer-sheets under the RTI Act across all the government-run educational institutions – including CBSE schools. The application fee for such a request is Rs 10 and further, a physical copy of any document can be obtained at Rs 2 per page. Additionally, BPL students will not be charged a penny for this.
