Apex court issues notice to CBSE

New Delhi, Sept. 10: The Supreme Court Monday issued notice to the Central Board of Secondary Education ( CBSE) on a plea seeking contempt action against the board for allegedly “disobeying” the top court’s order and charging exorbitant fees of up to ` 1,200 from students for obtaining copies of evaluated answersheets.

A bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, Navin Sinha and K M Joseph asked the CBSE to respond to the plea within six weeks.

The contempt plea has alleged that the CBSE has wilfully and deliberately disobeyed the directions of the apex court, which had in 2016 said that the board should ‘ scrupulously’ follow its 2011 verdict holding that the students have the fundamental and legal right to access their evaluated answer- sheets under the Right to Information Act. It has claimed that despite the apex court’s direction, the CBSE had published a notification prescribing fee of ` 1,000 and ` 1,200 for students of Class 10th and 12th respectively to obtain evaluated answer- sheets.

The petition has claimed that as per the court’s direction, the fee prescribed under the 2012 RTI Rules should be charged from the students for obtaining the answer- sheets. It sought setting aside of the CBSE notification prescribing fee of ` 1,000 and ` 1,200 for the students for obtaining copies of the evaluated answer- sheets.

The plea has also sought a direction to the CBSE to provide copies of evaluated answer- sheets to the examinees only as per provisions of the RTI Act, 2005 and at the fees prescribed under 2012 Rules.