Financial Express: New Delhi: Thursday,
February 09, 2017.
The Delhi
University (DU) today moved the Delhi High Court seeking setting aside of the
CIC’s orders slapping fines amounting to Rs 50,000 on the varsity’s Central
Public Information Officer (CPIO) for rejecting RTI applications seeking facts
about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s graduation degree.
The plea came
up for hearing before Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, but it could not be taken up as
the judge did not hold court today. The matter has now been listed for
consideration on February 21.
The Central
Information Commission (CIC) had on December 27 last year slapped fines of Rs
25,000 each on the then official on the two different applications.
The official
had rejected both RTI applications filed by Delhi-based lawyer Mohammad Irsad
and AAP leader Sanjay Singh, who had sought information about the Prime
Minister’s graduation degree.
The varsity
sought in the high court quashing and setting aside of the CIC’s December 27
last year decisions, terming them as “erroneous in law as they do not
appreciate a settled legal position that incomplete, blank or wrongly addressed
fee instruments cannot be accepted”.
DU, in its
appeal filed through advocate Arun Bhardwaj, said that the “premise of the
directions of the Information Commissioner is not tenable as the public
authority is already implementing the RTI Act smoothly and its officers are
appropriately trained to handle the implementation of the RTI Act in letter and
spirit”. “The orders are liable to be set aside on this misplaced premises
only,” the plea said.
The counsel
for the RTI applicants, Anupam Srivastava has said that the Chief Information
Commission had pulled up the then CPIO of the university and had said the
rejection reminded him of the saying “penny wise, pound foolish”.
He said that
the commission’s orders had come on pleas filed by Irsad and Singh whose RTI
queries seeking information on Modi’s degree were rejected on the ground that
the Indian Postal Order (IPO) was not marked in favour of the Registrar of the
varsity. The RTI applicants had also sought information regarding one other
student, the counsel said.