The Delhi High Court on Monday cancelled a 2016 order by the Central Information Commission (CIC) that had directed Delhi University to share details of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bachelor’s degree.

Justice Sachin Datta, who had reserved the judgment on February 27, passed the verdict on the university’s plea. “The impugned order is set aside,” the court said while pronouncing the order. A detailed copy of the verdict is still awaited.

Back in 2016, the CIC had asked Delhi University to allow Right to Information (RTI) applicants, including activist Neeraj Kumar and Mohd Irshad, to inspect records of the 1978 BA batch, the year PM Modi completed his graduation.

The order came after multiple RTI applications sought details of the results from that batch. In January 2017, the Delhi High Court had put a stay on the CIC order after the university challenged it.

The university, represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta along with advocates Rajat Nair and Dhruv Pande, argued that student records such as degrees, marks, and answer sheets are kept in a “fiduciary capacity” and cannot be shared under the RTI Act.

Mehta argued that the disclosure of such information did not serve “public interest” and was exempted under Section 8(1)(e) and (j) of the RTI Act.

While section 8(1)(e) exempts information held in a fiduciary capacity unless a larger public interest is proven, section 8(1)(j) exempts disclosure of personal information that does not relate to public activity and may cause an invasion of privacy.

The Solicitor General said the university had no objection to presenting the degree records to the Delhi High Court, but could not open original records to “strangers” seeking them for publicity or political purposes.

“The right to know,” Mehta said, “was not an untrammelled right and could always be curtailed by imposition of restrictions by the Parliament in the larger public interest.”

On the other side, RTI applicants represented by senior advocates Sanjay Hegde and Shadan Farasat said that details of a person’s academic qualifications should fall under public interest, especially for elected officials.

Hegde argued, “Elected offices favoured disclosure of several information, like their assets, to enable a voter to make a decision, and even academic qualifications fell in the same category.”

The petitioners maintained that universities do not hold student degree records in a fiduciary capacity and insisted that the CIC’s order was well within the scope of the RTI Act.

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