IBPS PO exams — why your RTI must go to the banks

The Institute of Banking Personnel Selection is a society promoted by banks to run the Common Recruitment Process — PO, Clerk, Specialist Officer, RRB. When candidates unhappy with scores or normalisation fire RTIs at IBPS House, the reply is usually a jurisdiction refusal. It is not stonewalling; the Commission itself has said the Institute does not fall under §2(h). The fix is routing, not persistence.

The Commission's reasoning does the work for you: IBPS examined on behalf of the participating banks, the banks select and appoint on the results, and the sponsor bank is the custodian of the records of the examination it commissioned. Public sector banks are squarely public authorities — substantially financed by the Central Government — and their CPIOs cannot plead IBPS's structure as a shield against records produced for them.

Practically: for PO and Clerk CRPs, every participating bank receives the results and merit lists IBPS compiles. Your scores, the cut-offs applied to you, and the documents behind your selection or rejection exist in the bank's HR records too.

1. My normalized and raw scores in each stage of CRP PO-[year], Registration No. ____, as received from IBPS.
2. The cut-off marks applied for shortlisting to the next stage, and the final merit cut-off, for the post and category under which I was considered.
3. Copy of my question-wise response sheet / marks record for the mains examination, as available with the bank from IBPS.
4. The number of candidates shortlisted for interview / final selection in my category, and my rank in it.
5. The minutes or record of the interview board's assessment of me, where an interview stage existed.

Keep each point to a document. Scores and cut-offs travel; “recheck my paper” does not — no examining body re-evaluates on RTI, and the Act does not ask them to. For the answer-sheet access rule in principle, see answer sheets under RTI — but for IBPS-run exams the records you can actually reach are the score, cut-off and selection files held by the banks.

1. Pick the bank you would have joined, or the one whose advertisement you answered; multiple banks on one merit list means one well-chosen RTI usually suffices — the cut-offs are common
2. Address the CPIO at the bank's headquarters (every bank publishes its CPIO under §4(1)(b)(xvi) on its site); online filing on rtionline.gov.in covers the nationalised banks
3. ₹10 fee, 30-day statutory clock
4. First appeal to the bank's FAA within 30 days of refusal or silence
5. Second appeal to the CIC within 90 days — and if the bank's CPIO replies “ask IBPS”, that reply itself goes into the appeal: the custodian-of-records holding answers it

• Do not file only at IBPS House and appeal its refusals — you will litigate the Institute's status instead of getting your records
• Do not demand re-evaluation or a re-tot the response sheet through RTI — ask for the copy and the marks record
• Do not attach grievance essays; numbered document requests get replies
• Do not miss the answer-key window on the exam site while the RTI runs — the two tracks are independent, and the window is shorter

Real example. Kashvi Pathak's CRP mains score fell 11 marks short of her expectation. She filed with a participating bank's CPIO: normalized and raw scores, the common cut-off, and the count shortlisted in her category. The reply showed the cut-off had moved above her normalized score — and the shift statistics behind the normalization. No injustice, but certainty, in 26 days and ₹10.

The CIC has held it is not a public authority under §2(h) — CIC/MP/C/2016/000219, 29 September 2017. The working route is the participating bank, which the same decision identified as custodian of the exam records.

Not from IBPS directly on that holding; ask the sponsor bank's CPIO for the response sheet and question-wise marks as received from IBPS. Answer sheets as a category are reachable under the law — see the answer-sheet page for the principle.

The routing principle does: address the authority that appoints you — the sponsor bank. SBI conducts its own recruitment and is itself a public authority.

Quote the custodian-of-records reasoning from the CIC decision in your first appeal; banks rarely defend it twice.

• Answer sheets under RTI — the 2011 judgment
• SSC CGL — answer keys, marks and RTI
• Banking hub — complaints, KYC, ombudsman
• The RTI Playbook

• CIC complaint CIC/MP/C/2016/000219, decided 29.09.2017 — IBPS not a public authority under §2(h); the sponsor bank is custodian of the examination records and must provide them
• ibps.in — IBPS examination portal for schedules, answer-key windows and notifications
• rtionline.gov.in — CPIO filing for public sector banks

Last reviewed: 26 August 2026. The §2(h) holding and the custodian-of-records direction verified against the CIC decision of 29 September 2017. Exam-fee and weightage claims carried by the old version of this page were unverifiable and have been removed.