In a significant ruling, the Delhi high court has held that marks obtained by a student in the CBSE board exam cannot be revealed under the transparency law as it would "defeat" the purpose of the new grading system.

The court set aside the verdict of a single judge bench and the Central Information Commission, which had asked the Central Board of Secondary Education to reveal marks obtained by a girl in her Class X board examination in 2010.

"We are unable to agree; we feel that the CIC as well as the learned single judge, by directing disclosure of 'marks', in the regime of 'grades' have indeed undone what was sought to be done by replacing marks with grades and defeated the very objective thereof.

"The objective, in replacing the marks with grades, as can be gathered from the documents on record, was to grade students in a bandwidth rather than numerically...," a bench of Acting Chief Justice A K Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said.