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He accordingly prayed for relief as claimed by WBBSE in its petitions and dismissal of W.P. No. 208 of 2008.

Dr. Chakraborty, learned counsel representing the University in the writ appeal placed the impugned judgment of the learned Judge dated 28.03.2008 in its entirety. Referring to the concessions purported to have made by him as recorded in the judgment under appeal, he contended that he had not conceded on any point and the learned Judge erred in so recording. According to him, the RTI Act has merely streamlined the procedure and laid down the modalities for furnishing of information. What was not there earlier, the RTI Act did not create anything new. He contended that it is too late in the day to doubt that the RTI Act seeks to give access to citizens who would like to have information regarding functioning of public authorities. He relied on its preamble to emphasize the purpose for which the RTI Act was enacted. He urged that information which could be gathered from an assessed answer script would not be vital for the functioning of the Government or for good governance of the country as well as to preserve democracy and, therefore, inspection of answer scripts by an examinee was not in contemplation of the Parliament at the time of enacting the RTI Act. Exercise of democratic rights of citizens in tune with Article 19 of the Constitution does not guarantee a student the right to inspect his own answer script. Under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, an examinee has no right to examine his answer scripts and, therefore, the RTI Act also does not contemplate such right. He reiterated before the Court that the University would generously give limited information to the examinees by letting them know the particulars of marks obtained by them in respect of each of the questions answered by them without giving access to the entire answer scripts and that would obviate the need of opening answer scripts of students to inspection which is also not the object of the RTI Act.

(emphasis supplied by us) In S.P. Gupta (supra), the Apex Court had the occasion to observe as follows:

"64. Now it is obvious from the Constitution that we have adopted a democratic form of Government. Where a society has chosen to accept democracy as its credal faith, it is elementary that the citizens ought to know what their Government is doing. The citizens have a right to decide by whom and by what rules they shall be governed and they are entitled to call on those who govern on their behalf to account for their conduct. No democratic Government can survive without accountability and the basic postulate of accountability is that the people should have information about the functioning of the Government. It is only if people know how Government is functioning that they can fulfil the role which democracy assigns to them and make democracy a really effective participatory democracy. 'Knowledge' said James Madison, 'will for ever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular Government without popular information or the means of obtaining it, is but a prologue to a force or tragedy or perhaps both'. The citizens' right to know the facts, the true facts, about the administration of the country is thus one of the pillars of a democratic State. And that is why the demand for openness in the Government is increasingly growing in different parts of the world.

65. The demand for openness in the Government is based principally on two reasons. It is now widely accepted that democracy does not consist merely in people exercising their franchise once in five years to choose their rulers and, once the vote is cast, then retiring in passivity and not taking any interest in the Government. Today it is common ground that democracy has a more positive content and its orchestration has to be continuous and pervasive. This means inter alia that people should not only cast intelligent and rational votes but should also exercise sound judgment on the conduct of the Government and the merits of public policies, so that democracy does not remain merely a sporadic exercise in voting but becomes a continuous process of Government -- an attitude and habit of mind. But this important role people can fulfil in a democracy only if it is an open Government where there is full access to information in regard to the functioning of the Government.

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46. To sum up the legal and constitutional position which emerges from the aforesaid discussion, it can be stated that:

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5. The right to get information in democracy is recognised all throughout and it is a natural right flowing from the concept of democracy. At this stage, we would refer to Article 19(1) and (2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is as under:

'(1) Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference. (2) Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.'