Disposing of appeals, the Bench affirmed the Calcutta High Court order directing examining bodies to permit examinees to inspect their answer books, subject to certain clarifications on the scope of the RTI Act. Writing the judgment, Justice Raveendran, however, said: “Indiscriminate and impractical demands or directions under the RTI Act for disclosure of all and sundry information [unrelated to transparency and accountability in the functioning of the public authorities and eradication or corruption] would be counter-productive as it will adversely affect the efficiency of the administration and result in the executive getting bogged down in the non-productive work of collecting and furnishing information.”
On disclosure of answer books, the Bench said the provisions of the RTI Act would prevail over the provisions of the bylaws/rules of the examining bodies. As a result, “unless the examining body demonstrates that the answer books fall under the exempted category of information under Section 8 (1) (a) of the RTI Act, it will be bound to provide access to an examinee to inspect and take copies of his evaluated answer books, even if such inspection or taking copies is barred under the rules.”
On the contention that the examining bodies held the answer books in their fiduciary capacity, the Bench said: “Once the examiner has evaluated the answer books, he ceases to have any interest in the evaluation done by him. He does not have any copyright or proprietary right or confidentiality right in regard to the evaluation. Therefore, it cannot be said that the examining body holds the evaluated answer books in a fiduciary relationship, qua the examiner. As no other exemption under Section 8 of the RTI Act is available in respect of evaluated answer books, the examining bodies will have to permit inspection.”
Protecting identity
However, to protect the safety and identity of the examiners, those portions which contain information on examiners/coordinators/scrutinisers/head examiners or which “may disclose their identity with reference to signature or initials shall have to be removed, covered, or otherwise severed from the non-exempted part of the answer books.”
The Bench said: “The right to access information does not extend beyond the period during which the examining body is expected to retain the answer books. In the case of the CBSE, the answer books are required to be maintained for three months and thereafter they are liable to be disposed of/destroyed. Some other examining bodies are required to keep the answer books for six months.”
The Bench said :
The effect of the provisions and scheme of the RTI Act is to divide ‘information’ into the three categories. They are :
- Information which promotes transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority, disclosure of which may also help in containing or discouraging corruption (enumerated in clauses (b) and (c) of section 4(1) of RTI Act).
- Other information held by public authority (that is all information other than those falling under clauses (b) and (c) of section 4(1) of RTI Act).
- Information which is not held by or under the control of any public authority and which cannot be accessed by a public authority under any law for the time being in force. Information under the third category does not fall within the scope of RTI Act. Section 3 of RTI Act gives every citizen, the right to ‘information’ held by or under the control of a public authority, which falls either under the first or second category. In regard to the information falling under the first category, there is also a special responsibility upon public authorities to suo moto publish and disseminate such information so that they will be easily and readily accessible to the public without any need to access them by having recourse to section 6 of RTI Act. There is no such obligation to publish and disseminate the other information which falls under the second category.
