The horizons and meanings of transparency in the system are widening. In the much awaited and land-mark judgement of Central Board of Secondary Education & anr v Aditya Bandhopadhyay & ors dated August 9, 2011, the Supreme Court of India has upheld the Calcutta High Court verdict and ruled that evaluated answer-scripts are covered under ‘information’ under Section 2(f) of the RTI Act and not exempted under Section 8(1)(e) of the Act. The result is that you can now inspect your evaluated answer-scripts and/or seek a certified copy of the same by filing an RTI application. But remember, accessing another candidate/examinee’s answers-script by an RTI applicant would be subject to the concerned candidate/examinee’s consent, by operation of Section 11 of the RTI Act. So go ahead and make use of this valuable right!!
University of Delhi students can address their RTI applications concerning DU to the PIO, University of Delhi, New Administrative Building, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007. Applications may either be sent by speed-post along with an Indian Postal Order (available at all post-offices) of Rs.10 value enclosed therewith; or hand-delivered at the New Administrative Building near Dean Student Welfare’s office, along with the RTI fee of Rs.10. The RTI application should contain “application under RTI Act 2005” as Subject, the information sought along with the necessary particulars such as name of the examinee, exam roll number etc in case of accessing answer-script and should be signed by the applicant. The application may be printed/typed or hand-written in Hindi or English. You need not file separate RTIs for separate papers; you can easily seek more than one answer-scripts through a single RTI. A printing cost of Rs.2 per page would be chargeable for each page in excess of five.
REMEMBER TO FILE YOUR RTI TO ACCESS ANSWER-SCRIPTS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, AS THE UNIVERSITY AS PER RULES DESTROYS THE RECORDS/ANSWER-SCRIPTS AFTER A CERTAIN TIME.
