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New Delhi: Delhi High Court has ruled that the marks
secured by a student in the secondary school examination cannot be
obtained even under the Right to Information (RTI) Act as this
would defeat the objective of replacing marks with grades
introduced in 2010.
The high court's ruling came while hearing a plea filed by the
Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) against the order of a
single-judge bench which had upheld an order of the Central
Information Commission (CIC) allowing disclosure of Class 10
marks.
"We are unable to agree; we feel that the CIC as well as the
learned single judge, by directing disclosure of 'marks' in the
regime of 'grades' have indeed undone what was sought to be done
by replacing marks with grades and defeated the very objective
thereof," a division bench of Acting Chief Justice A.K. Sikri and
Justice R.S. Endlaw said in their judgement Thursday.
The observation of the court came on the plea of Anil Kumar
Kathpal, who wanted the marks of his daughter to be disclosed. He
had sought to know the actual marks obtained by his daughter in
the Class 10 examination held in 2010, saying that the information
would help him to identify the weak areas in her studies.
The system of declaring subject-wise marks was replaced by the
nine-point grading system introduced in the secondary school
examination from 2010 to eliminate cut-throat competition.
The bench noted that even though marks are available with the CBSE,
owing to the examiners and teachers being not immediately
accustomed to grading, it cannot be disclosed as per the new
policy.
"In our opinion, no information which is forbidden by law or
information of a nature, if disclosed, would defeat the provisions
of any law or disclosure whereof is opposed to public policy,
cannot be regarded as 'lawful' and is to be ignored and no
disclosure thereof can be made or directed to be made," the court
said.
The court accepted the contentions of the CBSE that disclosure of
the secondary school examination marks would dilute and defeat the
grading system brought to reduce societal pressure and give a
stress-free and joyful learning environment.
"The objective, in replacing the marks with grades, as can be
gathered from the documents on record, was to grade students in a
bandwidth rather than numerically; it was felt that difference,
between a student having 81 percent and a student having 89
percent, could be owing to subjectivity in marking."
"There was no reason to otherwise consider a bearer of 81
percentile to be inferior to a bearer of 89 percentile and there
was no reason to treat them differently," the bench said.
The court, allowing the CBSE appeal against the disclosure of
marks, said: "We hold that disclosure of marks, which though
exists with the appellant, would amount to allowing play to the
policy earlier prevalent of marking the examinees."
"We are therefore unable to agree with the reasoning of the CIC
and of the learned Single Judge and allow this appeal. We hold the
information, disclosure of which was sought, to be no information
and also exempt from disclosure," the court held.
(Garima Tyagi can be contacted at garima.t@ians.in)
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