The Delhi University (DU) has once again declined to provide information related to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s degree, citing “privacy” reasons. It declined to respond to an RTI query filed by lawyer Mohammed Irsad, who demanded the information. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal said the mystery into the matter has only deepened.
The RTI response from the university stated that DU, as a matter of policy, seeks to maintain the privacy of every student as it holds the data pertaining to a student in a fiduciary relationship with the student concerned.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who had asked for details of the PM Modi’s degree to be made public earlier, tweeted that “this deepens the mystery around PM’s degree. If DU feels it is private info, then under RTI Act, DU should write to PM and seek his permission”.
In April this year, the chief minister had requested the Central Information Commission (CIC) to make details of PM Modi’s educational qualifications public, After which the CIC had given directions to DU to provide the necessary details.
However, DU has consistently refused to share the information, after which the AAP alleged that the Prime Minister’s educational qualifications degree is forged.
In the middle of the controversy, the BJP president Amit Shah and Union finance minister Arun Jaitley held a press conference at party headquarter, where they displayed the PM Modi’s degrees, asking Kejriwal to apologise to the Prime Minister.
The AAP Delhi convenor Dilip Pandey on Sunday said since Shah and Jaitley had already made the degrees public, the information was no longer private.
“If DU is claiming that the information is private, were degrees the degrees shown by Shah and Jaitley fake? If DU feels this is personal information, it should ask the PM for permission to make them public,” Pandey added.
