CIC Tells UPSC and DoPT to Resume Publishing Paper-Wise Civil Services Marks Stopped Since 2018

The news

New Delhi. The Central Information Commission (CIC) has recommended reinstating the practice of publishing the detailed break-up of marks obtained by selected candidates in the Civil Services (Main) Examination, after finding that the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) had no record of any formal decision behind discontinuing the practice from 2018, Press Trust of India reports in The Hindu. The CIC is the appellate body under the Right to Information Act, 2005, which hears second appeals and complaints when a citizen is denied information by a Central government office. The matter arose from an RTI application seeking comparative data on the marks obtained by all selected candidates in each General Studies paper, the optional subject paper and the Personality Test, the interview stage, over 10 years up to 2023. The applicant also sought information on how different optional subjects had fared in terms of marks. The applicant contended that while paper-wise marks of recommended candidates were publicly disclosed until the Civil Services Examination (CSE) 2017, only aggregate marks were made available from 2018 onwards, affecting aspirants’ ability to assess performance trends in different optional subjects. The recommendation came amid contradictory positions of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) and DoPT on who holds the detailed marks. The UPSC told the commission that after the declaration of the final result it gives the detailed break-up of marks to DoPT and to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), the training academy for the IAS at Mussoorie. DoPT maintained that the detailed marks are generated and maintained solely by the UPSC. The CIC noted that despite being given a final opportunity, DoPT failed to produce any file noting, office memorandum, policy decision or other record substantiating the discontinuation of publication of the marks from 2018 onwards. A file noting is the written record on a government file of how and why a decision was taken. The commission observed that the detailed marks “should be disclosed” to ensure “transparency and fairness in the selection procedure”. The report names no Information Commissioner, sets out no compliance deadline and carries no response from the UPSC or DoPT. The syllabus link is GS2 on transparency and accountability, the role of constitutional bodies such as the UPSC, and the working of the RTI Act.

Static syllabus linkage

1. The RTI Act makes disclosure the rule and secrecy the exception. The Right to Information Act, 2005 gives every citizen the right to information held by or under the control of a public authority. Section 4(1)(b) obliges every public authority to publish proactively, within 120 days of the Act’s enactment and to update regularly, its functions, decision-making procedures, norms and rules, among 17 listed categories. Section 8(1) lists the exemptions, including information held in a fiduciary relationship (clause e) and personal information with no relationship to public activity or interest (clause j). Section 8(2) allows disclosure of exempt information if the public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to protected interests. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 amends Section 8(1)(j) to exempt personal information more broadly, which is likely to shape future disputes over candidate-wise marks.
2. Appeals run from the public authority to the Information Commissions, which also have a monitoring role. Under Section 19, a person denied information may file a first appeal within 30 days to an officer senior to the Public Information Officer, and a second appeal within 90 days to the Central or State Information Commission. Section 19(8)(a) empowers the Commission to require the public authority to take steps to secure compliance, including publishing certain information or categories of information. Section 20 lets the Commission impose a penalty of ₹250 a day, up to ₹25,000, on a Public Information Officer who denies information without reasonable cause. Section 25 requires the Commission to prepare an annual report, and Section 25(5) allows it to recommend steps to a public authority whose practice does not conform to the Act. This recommendatory power is why the CIC’s view in a systemic matter can be a “recommendation” rather than an order.
3. The CIC’s composition and tenure were changed by the RTI (Amendment) Act, 2019. Under Section 12, the Central Information Commission consists of the Chief Information Commissioner and up to 10 Information Commissioners, appointed by the President on the recommendation of a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and a Union Cabinet Minister nominated by the Prime Minister. The original Act fixed a five-year term, with the Chief Information Commissioner’s salary equal to that of the Chief Election Commissioner. The RTI (Amendment) Act, 2019 empowered the Central government to prescribe the term, salaries and service conditions of Information Commissioners at both the Central and State levels. Rules framed in 2019 fixed the term at three years. Critics argued that this weakened the Commissions’ independence from the government whose decisions they review.
4. The UPSC is a constitutional body under Part XIV, and courts have drawn a line on exam disclosure. Articles 315 to 323 in Part XIV of the Constitution provide for the UPSC and State Public Service Commissions. The Chairman and members are appointed by the President under Article 316 for six years or until the age of 65, and can be removed under Article 317 only after an inquiry by the Supreme Court on a reference by the President, or on specific grounds such as insolvency. Article 320 makes it the UPSC’s duty to conduct examinations for appointment to the services of the Union, and Article 323 requires it to present an annual report to the President, which is laid before Parliament. In CBSE v. Aditya Bandopadhyay (2011), the Supreme Court held that evaluated answer books are “information” under the RTI Act and that an examining body does not hold them in a fiduciary capacity. In UPSC v. Angesh Kumar (2018), however, it declined to direct the disclosure of Civil Services answer scripts and raw marks without a larger public interest, citing the integrity of the examination system.

Why UPSC loves this

1. GS2 asks about transparency, the RTI Act and constitutional bodies. The syllabus names both “transparency and accountability” and “appointment to various constitutional posts, powers, functions and responsibilities of various constitutional bodies.” Mains has asked whether the RTI (Amendment) Act, 2019 diluted the Information Commissions’ autonomy, and how the RTI has changed governance. This story joins the two strands: a constitutional body, a Ministry and an RTI appeal.
2. Prelims regularly tests RTI and UPSC provisions. UPSC has asked about the appointment and removal of the Chairman of the UPSC, the Articles in Part XIV and the composition of the Information Commissions. The appellate time-limits, the Section 8 exemptions and the 2019 amendment to tenure are all standard Prelims material.
3. Ethics and the interview board prize fair recruitment. GS4 questions on probity in governance and the Personality Test itself often turn to merit-based recruitment. An aspirant who can argue calmly about why the UPSC publishes or withholds marks, without grievance, shows exactly the balance an interview board looks for.

Analysis

1. The missing file noting is a bigger problem than the missing marks. The most serious finding is not that paper-wise marks are unpublished, but that DoPT could produce no file noting, office memorandum or policy decision explaining why a long-standing practice was stopped. A government that changes a public practice without recording why cannot defend that choice in court, before Parliament or before an information commission. Record-keeping is the basis of accountability, which is why the RTI Act requires decision-making procedures to be disclosed. If the decision was right, a recorded reason would have made the CIC’s task easy. The episode suggests either a decision taken informally or one taken by the UPSC and not communicated, and both are poor practice.
2. Two bodies each saying the other holds the data is a classic accountability gap. The UPSC says it gives the detailed marks to DoPT and LBSNAA; DoPT says only the UPSC generates and maintains them. Both statements may be literally true, but together they leave the applicant nowhere. The RTI Act anticipates this by requiring a public authority to transfer an application under Section 6(3) to the authority that holds the information. The CIC’s recommendation to both bodies is the right way to cut through it. The larger lesson is that the owner of a data set, its purposes of use and its publication should be fixed in writing.
3. Paper-wise marks serve a real public interest in a fair optional-subject system. The applicant’s point about optional subjects is not idle. When candidates choose among dozens of optional papers, whether some subjects score systematically higher is a question of fairness that only aggregate data can answer. The UPSC applies moderation and scaling to address this, but without paper-wise data no outsider can test whether it works. Publishing marks of selected candidates, which was done until CSE 2017, poses little privacy harm because their names and final marks are already public. The counter-view is that detailed publication fuels a coaching-driven chase of ‘scoring’ optionals and invites litigation, and that the UPSC’s integrity is better protected by less disclosure.
4. Angesh Kumar limits disclosure of answer scripts, not statistical transparency. The UPSC can cite UPSC v. Angesh Kumar (2018), in which the Supreme Court refused to order the disclosure of answer scripts and raw marks without a larger public interest. That concern was about individual evaluation and the confidentiality of examiners. Publishing paper-wise marks of successful candidates, as the UPSC itself did for years, is a different and lighter step. The DPDP Act’s amendment to Section 8(1)(j) may, however, give the UPSC a new argument that candidate-wise marks are personal information. The cleanest solution is anonymised, subject-wise statistics, which serve the public interest without identifying anyone.
5. A recommendation is only as strong as the institution’s willingness to follow it. The CIC’s view is framed as a recommendation, and the report sets no time-frame. Information Commissions have long complained that their orders are ignored, and their independence has been debated since the 2019 amendment. The UPSC, a constitutional body that reports to Parliament through Article 323, has every reason to act on this voluntarily, since trust in the examination is its main asset. If it does not, the question will return through fresh RTI appeals or a writ petition. How it responds will show whether transparency is treated as a duty or as a concession.

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