NEW DELHI: Misuse of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 should attract a penalty, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta reportedly argued in the Delhi high court Thursday as he defended Delhi University’s (DU) refusal to disclose Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bachelor of Arts degree.
“RTI Act is for its use, for which it was enacted. If it is found that it is misused, penalty must follow,” Mehta argued in court, LiveLaw reported in its live coverage of the court proceedings.
Mehta termed people who allegedly misuse the Act as “intermeddlers”, who have no public interest in heart and imposing a penalty will have a deterrent effect, Bar and Bench reported.
Mehta, who represented DU, said that the demand for such information was not in “public interest” but driven by political motives.
According to LiveLaw, Mehta, in his submission before Justice Sachin Datta, argued: “The degree of one student is demanded, who is the PM of the country. We have nothing to hide. We have a year-wise register where everything is mentioned. DU has no objection in showing the original degree for BA in 1978 to Court…DU has no reservation in showing but I will not expose university records to the scrutiny of strangers who are here either for publicity or for some oblique political motive.”
According to LiveLaw, Mehta said, “The authority will have to decide, what is your interest. Somebody has passed out in 1978, you are wanting to use it for political purposes. We have it, but we will not share. This way we would be flooded with lakhs and lakhs of information.”
Modi had sworn in his election affidavit that he graduated from DU in the BA Political Science course in the year 1978.
Mehta also argued that the RTI Act cannot be turned into a tool for harassment and highlighted the strain such requests place on public offices. “Public authorities will not be able to exercise their purpose if such applications are entertained. People would be searching old documents, would be bogged down. The RTI Act cannot be used as a tool to intimidate officers doing their duty.”
On February 11, during a previous hearing, the solicitor-general had said that mere curiosity that ‘I want to know about it, what is your objection’ cannot be an argument, report by The Times of India.
“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,” Mehta argued on February 11, per news reports.
Former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal in 2016 had asked Modi to “come clean about his educational degrees.” One Aam Aadmi Party supporter Neeraj Sharma filed an RTI seeking details of PM Modi’s degree.
DU refused the information and said that it was “private” and had “nothing to do with public interest”.
The matter reached the Central Information Commission (CIC), which directed DU to reveal the information in 2017. The University challenged this and said that public curiosity does not equate to public interest.
Agencies
Punish petitioners who demand to see PM Modi’s education degree: Solicitor-general
