Akansha Upadhyay
Published on: 18 November 2022 at 20:49 IST
The Delhi High Court has deferred the hearing till May 3 next year a petition by Delhi University challenging the Central Information Commission’s (CIC) order which directed the varsity to allow inspection of records of all students who had passed the BA exam in 1978, the year when Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also cleared it.
The high court had stayed the Commission’s order dated December 21, 2016, on January 23, 2017.
Justice Yashwant Varma, in his order passed on November 15, noted that no one appeared for DU and adjourned the hearing in the matter.
Besides DU’s challenge to the CIC order, the court was also hearing other petitions which raised similar legal issues about the disclosure of details of results of certain examinations.
In response to activist Neeraj’s request for information under the Right to Information Act on students who appeared in the Bachelor of Arts examination at DU in 1978, the CIC issued its ruling.
In its challenge to the CIC order, DU has contended that the order of the RTI authority is “arbitrary” and “untenable in law” as the information sought to be disclosed is “third-party personal information”.
The DU in its plea contended that “it was completely illegal for the CIC to direct the petitioner (DU) to disclose information which is available to it in its fiduciary capacity, that too without rendering any finding of any pressing necessity or overwhelming public interest warranting disclosure of such information on account of overwhelming or larger public interest sought to be achieved through such disclosure.”
DU has earlier told the court that the CIC order has “far-reaching adverse consequences for the petitioner and all universities in the country which hold degrees of crores of students in a fiduciary capacity”.
It had directed the university “to” facilitate inspection of relevant register where complete information about the result of all students who passed in Bachelor of Arts in the year 1978 along with “roll number, names of the students, fathers’ name and marks obtained as available with the university and provide a certified copy of the extract of relevant pages from the register, free of cost.”