Delhi University on Tuesday argued in the Delhi High Court that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BA degree did not fall under “public interest” under the Right to Information Act while defending its refusal to share the document.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing DU, told Justice Sachin Datta that something of “interest to the public” was not the same as “public interest”.
“Mere curiosity that ‘I want to know about it what is your objection’ cannot be an argument. The public may get interested in something but it may not be public interest..Is there any public interest in this matter? The answer in the facts of this case is no,” news agency PTI reported Mehta as saying.
Senior counsel Sanjay Hegde, representing the RTI applicant before the court, defended the order, arguing that an educational institution does not hold a student’s marks in a fiduciary capacity.
The Central Information Commission on December 21, 2016, ordered the inspection of records of all students who cleared the BA exam in 1978 — the year Prime Minister Modi also passed it.
The CIC, in its order, asked DU to allow inspection and rejected the argument of its public information officer that it was third-party personal information, observing there was “neither merit nor legality” in it.
The University challenged the order calling it “arbitrary” and “untenable in law” and that the information sought to be disclosed was “third-party personal information”. Following this, the high court stayed the CIC order on January 23, 2017.
The next hearing is on February 19.