Can present PM Modi’s degree to court, but not to strangers, Delhi University tells HC

Delhi University told the High Court on Thursday that it had no objections to presenting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bachelor of Arts degree from 1978 to the court, but maintained that it could not disclose it to strangers, The Hindu reported.

Justice Sachin Datta of the High Court on Thursday reserved his verdict on the university’s 2017 plea challenging the Central Information Commission’s order directing it to allow the inspection of records.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, representing the university, contended that the information panel’s order was liable to be set aside. He alleged that the Right to Information application in the case was politically motivated.

The solicitor general had earlier argued that mere curiosity was not reason enough to approach Right to Information fora.

“Here is a case where a stranger walks into the RTI office of University and says, out of 10 lakh students, give me degree of X,” he said, according to Live Law. “The question is whether anyone can walk in and ask for degrees of others?”

Mehta added that the university holds details of students’ degrees and marksheets only in a “fiduciary capacity” and that they were constituted personal information.

Fiduciary capacity refers to an arrangement in which an organisation or individual is trusted to manage property for another entity.

However, advocate Sanjay Hegde, representing the…

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