The Wire: Haryana: Thursday, July 06, 2017.
A RTI query
has drawn a blank from the governor’s house, the assembly secretariat and the
chief minister’s office.
The education
qualification of Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar has become a big
mystery with both the Haryana state assembly secretariat and the chief
minister’s office (CMO) pleading ignorance about it, in reply to a RTI query.
While filing
his nomination papers for the 2014 assembly election, Khattar had only
mentioned his educational qualification as “Graduate, Delhi University, New
Delhi” and had left blank the other column where details of highest educational
qualification were sought. Due to this, lawyer-activist Hemant Kumar had filed
a RTI query with the state public information officer (SPIO) at Haryana Raj
Bhawan on May 19, seeking details about Khattar’s degree.
What
subject did Khattar graduate in and in which year?
Kumar, a lawyer
in the Punjab and Haryana high court, had asked if Khattar had done his
graduation in BA, BSc, BCom or some other course; what was the year in which he
completed his graduation, the name of the college or department of Delhi
University from which he had pursued the aforesaid degree course and the
percentage of marks /division obtained by him either year wise or in the final
year of the course.
In the RTI
application, Kumar had also stated that while this information should have been
voluntarily stated by Khattar in his election affidavit, the concerned
returning officer did not notice the omission at the time of scrutinising
Khattar’s nomination papers, who was later handpicked by Prime Minister
Narendra Modi to lead the BJP government in the state.
RTI plea
was repeatedly transferred
Rather than
replying to the RTI application, the SPIO at Raj Bhawan transferred it under
Section 6(3) of the Act to its counterpart in Haryana Vidhan Sabha on May 26,
which in turn transferred it to SPIO at the CMO on June 15, asserting that the
information as sought may be available in its office.
After waiting
for a fortnight, the SPIO in CMO replied that as per the record of the
secretariat, the information sought is not available with it.
Kumar, who
now has a month’s time to appeal against this response, if he so desires, to
the First Appellate Authority cum Under Secretary at the CMO, said he “wonders
if any official record is maintained regarding the details of academic record
of CM and if so, in which public authority?”
Incidentally,
prior to this Kumar had also exposed discrepancy in the educational
qualification of Haryana assembly speaker Kanwar Pal through his RTI
application. Following his application, the Haryana assembly had removed from
its official website the name of speaker Kanwar Pal’s college and also changed
his educational qualification to BA second year from Bachelor of Arts.
Khattar’s
educational qualification issue has come after the qualifications of several
prominent leaders, including Modi, Union minister Smriti Irani and former Delhi
minister Jitender Singh Tomar, have already made headlines.
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