Degree row: Delhi high court seeks judicial records of Smriti Irani case
The Delhi high court on Tuesday summoned the judicial records of a case in which a trial court had dismissed a plea against textiles minister Smriti Irani alleging that she misrepresented her educational qualifications before the election commission (EC).
Justice SP Garg called for records of the trial court to be submitted before it on the next date of hearing on September 13.
The court issued the direction on a plea of freelance writer Ahmer Khan, challenging the trial court’s decision of October 18, 2016, by which his complaint was dismissed.
The trial court had held that the appeal was filed to “needlessly harass” Irani as she was a union minister.
While declining to summon her as an accused, the trial court judge had said that there was a “great delay of around 11 years” in filing the complaint.
The petitioner said the trial court order was bad in law and it needed to be set aside.
Khan alleged that Irani had deliberately given discrepant information about her educational qualifications in affidavits filed before the EC in 2004, 2011 and 2014 and did not give any clarifications later.
The petitioner had urged a trial court to take cognisance of the offences alleged in the plea under Section 125A of the Representation of the People Act (RPA) and “summon accused person, Smriti Z Irani, for trial”.
Section 125A of RPA deals with penalty for filing false affidavit and entails a jail term of up to six months or fine or both.