Authority: Appellate Authority under the RTI Act, Securities and Exchange Board of India

Order Date: September 09, 2026

Case Overview

The appeal was filed by Ritesh Kumar (Roll No. 258100xxxx) against the response of the CPIO, SEBI, Mumbai to his RTI application dated July 03, 2026. The appellant had sought two specific pieces of information related to his SEBI Grade A Law Officer Phase II examination held on February 21, 2026: (1) certified copies of his evaluated answer scripts for Paper 1 and Paper 2, and (2) copies of the official model answer key or evaluation guidelines used by examiners.

SEBI's CPIO responded on July 30, 2026, stating that the online examination for recruitment of SEBI Grade A Officers is conducted by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS), an autonomous body, under the terms of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). According to this MOU, only IBPS maintains possession of copies of evaluated descriptive papers, and these are not shared with SEBI. Consequently, the requested information was not available with SEBI. The respondent did provide the appellant's response sheet (answer marked by Roll No. 2581006407) and the right answer keys for the post of Officer Grade 'A' (Assistant Manager) 2025 Legal Stream Phase II exam.

For the second query regarding model answer keys or evaluation guidelines, the respondent simply stated that no such information was available with SEBI.

The appellant filed this appeal on August 11, 2026 (Registration No. SEBIH/A/E/26/00307) on the grounds that he was refused access to the requested information.

The Appellate Authority considered the application, response, and appeal, noting that SEBI can only provide information that is available in its records. The authority relied on a precedent set by the Hon'ble Central Information Commission (CIC) in the matter of Lakshminarayanan R vs. SEBI (order dated February 09, 2023), which established that information must be existent and available in records to be disclosable under the RTI Act, 2005.

Final Outcome

The Appellate Authority found no deficiency in SEBI's response and dismissed the appeal. The practical consequence is that the appellant will not obtain the certified copies of his evaluated answer scripts or the evaluation guidelines through SEBI, as these documents are not in SEBI's possession but are held exclusively by IBPS.

Topics: RTI Appeal, Recruitment Examination, Information Disclosure