The Rajasthan State Information Commission has directed a government school in Chittorgarh district to get the help of the police to trace a bundle of 197 answer sheets missing since 2018. The Commission’s order followed an RTI application to the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) from a woman candidate seeking her answer sheet after she was shown as absent in a Diploma in Elementary Education examination held in December 2018.
The examinee complained that she had been asking for a copy of her answer sheet for a long time, but neither the organising institute nor the Government Senior Secondary School, Senthi, where the exam was conducted, was giving a satisfactory reply. Instead, she was marked as absent in a subject in the examination.
The school management maintained that two bundles of answer sheets were handed over to the post office for sending them to NIOS. Though the post office informed the school that the bundles were delivered to the NIOS on December 28, 2018, the candidate was shown as absent in the said paper in the results announced subsequently.
Hearing an appeal under the Right to Information Act, Information Commissioner Narayan Bareth said the answer sheets formed the basis for preparation of a marksheet, which was not just a piece of paper. “A candidate builds the foundation of his dreams for future on the basis of the marksheet. An answer sheet going missing is a serious matter,” Mr. Bareth said.
The Information Commission asked the school management to file a police complaint and get a first information report registered in the case, as the candidate had stated that her answer sheet had been lost before evaluation. The NIOS had informed her that there was no provision for providing copies of answer sheets to the candidates.
The Commission had on February 1 this year asked the school management to contact the NIOS and make the answer sheet available. The appellant moved the Commission when its order was not complied with. The Commission also sought a response from the NIOS after taking note of the candidate’s plea that the incident had had an adverse impact on her career prospects.
