Arvind Kejriwal, Chief Minister of Delhi, has petitioned the Gujarat High Court for a review of its March decision, which allowed a Gujarat University appeal and nullified and overturned a Central Information Commission (CIC) directive ordering the university to "search for information" regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's degrees, stated a report in The New Indian Express.
On Friday, June 9, the complaint was admitted by the court of Justice Biren Vaishnav and a rule was issued to the respondents, Gujarat University, the Union of India, the Chief Information Commissioner, and Professor M Sridhar Acharyulu, who was the CIC commissioner at the time the order was made.
Is it on the university website?
While the court had noted that PM Modi's degree is available on the university's website in response to arguments made to that effect by Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta, attorney for the university, "upon a scan of the said website.. is found that the said 'degree' is not available, but a document referred to as OR (Office Register) is displayed", according to the review petition filed by Kejriwal.
The petition notes that even the aforementioned OR "appears to be cryptic and without any seal or signatures of the authority", making it "impossible" to verify it.
In his appeal, Kejriwal contends that the display of "degree" on the university's official website is one of the key and preliminary grounds for demanding a review of the court's earlier decision. Because the degree is not available on the website, the judgement "suffers from the error apparent on the face of the record and permitting them would lead to failure of justice", it has been stated.
Arvind Kejriwal's Attorney Aum Kotwal told the media, "The university lawyer had only orally submitted on the day of the hearing, that too for the first time, that the degree is available on the website. We argued that there was no way for us to verify the oral submission and therefore OR cannot be deemed a degree as the university stated."
"A review petition was submitted in the High Court today (June 9), and the court admitted our petition, and set a hearing date for June 30," Kotwal said about his review plea. Kejriwal also contested the Rs 25,000 fine imposed by the court for continuing to pursue the issue of PM Modi's degree, claiming that the proceedings were begun suo moto by the then CIC and professor M Sridhar, implying that he did not pursue the subject.
