EMPOWERED - UPSC exams made transparent

CANDIDATES WHO take the civil services examinations can now insist that the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) inform them exactly how they fared.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) on Monday ruled in favour of a group of students who had appealed in August, seeking to know, under the Right to Information (RTI) Act, their scores in the civil services preliminary exam this year. Earlier, the UPSC had refused to reveal the marks.

Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah directed the UPSC to disclose within two weeks the marks each applicant had obtained in the general studies and optional papers. “As it is a full-bench order, it will be applicable to all civil services examinations,” Habibullah told HT.

The UPSC has also been asked to disclose the cut-off marks for the general studies and each optional paper. In the absence of a cut-off, the subject-wise marks of the successful candidates should be made public.

The UPSC might appeal against the order in the high court.

At the November 3 hearing, the UPSC’s lawyer S.K. Mishra had said marks should not be revealed as it would make public the UPSC’s ‘scientific’ scaling system which is protected under the Copyright Act. The CIC said the disclosure of the ’scaling system’ should be considered in the larger public interest.