Aspirants use Gandhigiri against UPSC officials

Flowers were given with students pleading UPSC officials to reveal the marks scored by them in the preliminary examination, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 4, 2006, 02:24:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Union Public Service Commission officials (UPSC) got a rude shock when civil service aspirants took a cue from Bollywood flick Laga Raho Munnabhai and offered roses as a mark of protest for denying information sought under the RTI Act.

The students stopped UPSC officials when they were coming out of the Central Information Commission (CIC) office. Flowers were given with students pleading UPSC officials to relent and reveal the marks scored by them in the preliminary examination.

UPSC, as a principle, only declares pass and fail for the preliminary examination while the marks are revealed only for main examination and the final interview.

The full bench of CIC on Friday closed the arguments on an appeal filed by number of students against the UPSC's decision to deny marks of the preliminary examination on the grounds of 'larger public interest' and 'Intellectual Property Rights' (IPR).

UPSC counsel R Mishra pleaded that the methodology of screening the objective type answer sheets is unique to the commission and is therefore covered under IPR regulations. Counsel for students countered the claim saying UPSC was not a commercial organisation that can claim benefit of IPR.

"The computerised scaling of answer sheets is not a literary work nor industry design nor a trade mark nor an invention that comes under IPR regulation," said Aman Lekhi appearing on behalf of the students.

The issue of public interest and third party interest was hotly debated even as the five commissions including CIC posed several questions to Mishra. The UPSC counsel said that if the screening methodology is revealed the integrity of the examination system can get manipulated.

"Non meritorious students may beat the system and defeat the purpose of the examination to select best talent from various fields," Mishra said.

Prashant Bhushan, also was appearing for students, had a different take as he said revealing the methodology would help UPSC in plugging the holes and making examination system more credible and accountable. "If UPSC is not in favour of transparency then there is something seriously wrong with it," he urged.

On the UPSC's claim that revealing information about examination involve third party interest - the future students - was countered on the ground that it was based on a hypothetical assumption. To this, Information Commission MM Ansari commented that UPSC's case is that of 'inflamed imagination'.

Another commissioner Padma Balasubramanian even asked UPSC why not marks of individual students' are revealed as done by Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission. Mishra explained that the methodology and marks are linked. "Revealing one will lead to another (methodology)," he said.

At the end, CIC Wajahat Habibullah said the commission would announce its order next week.

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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