CBSE will share AIEEE answer key, but not question paper

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has disclosed answer keys of the All India Engineering Entrance Test (AIEEE) after much reluctance but not the questions papers which would have helped the students fare in the examination.

Updated on: Jan 4, 2012, 23:33:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has disclosed answer keys of the All India Engineering Entrance Test (AIEEE) after much reluctance but not the questions papers which would have helped the students fare in the examination.

The CBSE conducts India’s largest multi-choice question type paper (AIEEE) for admission in various engineering colleges across India. But, the board had not been disclosing the answer sheets or information to help students know more about the examination.

The Central Information Commission (CIC) in September this year asked the board to provide the information about answer sheets of the students to the applicant Rajiv Kumar of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, but without names and roll number of the candidates.

On November 22, the CBSE provided the answer keys to Kumar, a year after it claimed that providing answer keys was against the board’s policy and was not in “larger public interest”. However, the board’s another wing that conducts All India Pre-Medical Test (AIPMT) provided the answer keys without charging a penny.

The board also cited the CIC’s order of April 2007 saying that a citizen cannot seek disclosure of the evaluated answer sheets under the RTI Act. The board, however, failed to mention subsequent order by Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi, which over-ruled the earlier order and said that the answer sheets should be provided in the large public interest.

Most of the other examination bodies such as Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and state education boards provide the answer keys along with questions papers on the day of the examination.

“The CBSE is now providing answer keys which would be of no use to students who appeared in AIEEE. They (answer keys) should be disclosed on the day of examination so that the students could find out how they have fared,” Kumar, who had filed a public interest litigation in Delhi high court regarding transparency in AIEEE said.

The CBSE has, however, cited huge data base as a reason for not been able provide the copy of answer sheets on its website. In future, it was willing to disclose answer keys with question papers on AIEEE website.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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