The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
HC judge will appear in SC to argue against collegium’s transfer move
THE CENTRAL Information Commission has ruled that Delhi University will have to provide a copy of the records of all students who completed their BA degree in 1978 — the year when the university said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had cleared the examination.
Last year, the university had denied these records to an RTI applicant, saying that it was the “personal information of the students concerned, the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest”.
The Commission, however, said that matters relating to the education of a student — current or former — fall under the category of public interest.
In another ruling on a related case, the CIC fined the university’s Public Information Officer Rs 25,000 for denying information under RTI on the Prime Minister’s degree on the grounds that the mandatory postal order of Rs 10 was not addressed to the correct authority.
The authenticity of Prime Minister Modi’s BA degree was questioned by Aam Aadmi Party leader and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal last May. He had claimed that Modi’s degrees were fake. Defending Modi, his party, the BJP, had produced copies of what they said were the Prime Minister’s degrees.
BJP leaders had stated last year that Modi had completed his BA in political science from the distance learning programme of OVER 30 years ago, a college professor in Kerala, who belonged to the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect, knocked at the doors of the highest court in India on behalf of his children, citing religion as the reason to safeguard their right to not sing the national anthem at school.
Next month, when a Supreme Court bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra restarts hearing petitions on its order last year on national anthems in cinema halls, the Jehovah’s Witnesses may again be at the forefront in challenging that decision.
On August 11, 1986, the Supreme Court had allowed Emmanuel’s plea and held that forcing the children to sing the national anthem at school violated their fundamental right to religion.
The latest move by the IN A FIRST, a sitting High Court judge will show up next month in Supreme Court to argue against the collegium’s mandate to transfer him.
The judge has written to the apex court about his decision to appear in person while the parent high court has sought orders to ask him to vacate his official bungalow in Chennai so Jehovah’s Witnesses will seek to overturn the apex court’s order on November 30, 2016, that all cinema halls in India would play the national anthem before the feature film starts. This order also made it mandatory for all present in the hall “to stand up to show respect to the national that one of the newly-appointed judges could be allotted the accommodation.
Not just this, the high court also wants the judge to return 12 files that are allegedly still in his possession.
On December 21, Justice C S Karnan, a sitting judge of Calcutta High Court, wrote to the Supreme Court registry, apprising them of his willingness to appear in person and argue his case against the collegium’s proposal to transfer him out of Madras High Court. anthem” as part of their “sacred obligation”.
This time, it’s learnt that representatives of Jehovah’s Witnesses, including a Us-based general counsel, are in the process of finalising a detailed application to be filed shortly in
This recommendation was made last February but is yet to be accepted by the judge. He had joined the Calcutta High Court in March 2016 after the President signed his warrant of transfer and set a deadline.
Last year, the Supreme Court collegium had recommended Justice Karnan’s transfer and the High Court served him with the proposal. But Justice Karnan, in an unprecedented move, suo motu “stayed” his transfer order,