By Vikram Kilpady
The Gujarat High Court on March 31 allowed a plea of the Gujarat University to quash a Central Information Commission (CIC) order of 2016 that had asked it to provide information to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s post-graduate degree from the university.
Justice Biren Vaishnav of the High Court held: “Educational documents including degrees fall within the ambit of personal information of a citizen, disclosure of which is exempted under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act”. The judge also imposed Rs 25,000 cost on Kejriwal and asked the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) convener to remit the amount within four weeks to the Gujarat State Legal Services Authority.
Justice Vaishnav was severe on the CIC for venturing into judicial activism and politics after being “overwhelmed by the fact that the information is sought by a citizen occupying the post of Chief Minister and thus liable to be disclosed”.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for Gujarat University, said this kind of information cannot be sought just because PM Modi holds high office. “Curiosity cannot be equated with public interest,” he said, adding there’s a clear line between personal information and public data when it comes to public authorities.
Objecting to the University being asked to reveal details, Mehta said the varsity should not be forced to share data of any student of the university. He said the law was being misused for settling petty political scores.
The changes to the RTI Act as part of the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill providing the exemption for personal information had been objected to by activists. Apart from the degree controversy, the loophole has been cited to deny applicants details of beneficiaries of the PM CARES Fund and other such data.
The educational qualification of Prime Minister Modi has been cause for much opposition attention and crowing after the BJP swept to power in 2014. The party has further consolidated its position after the 2019 electoral victory and is now looking at a third straight term. An attempt to end the degree brouhaha was undertaken in 2016 when Home Minister Amit Shah released a Bachelor of Arts degree from Delhi University and a Master of Arts from Gujarat University in Entire Political Science, saying they were the PM’s degrees. These were not the original degrees but were photocopies. The subject for the MA and the gamut of its reach, remember the “Entire” word, was subject to more scrutiny. Others who cleared the course noted the addition of the adverb and wondered silently and left it at that.
Political rivals were not that sparing; they attacked the party’s social media cell’s alleged proficiency with Photoshop and other such software that can be used to make changes.
There are many theories on the Internet and social media circulating about the truthfulness of the degree claims. Despite not trending on Twitter, thanks to a maverick billionaire’s tinkering, the degrees, to be precise, their photostat copies, are all over again. Users have noted some spelling mistakes: Gujarat University is spelled as Gujarat Unibersity (sic) and the PM’s father’s name is spelled as Damoderdas as against Damodardas in the candidate’s affidavit to the Election Commission while filing his nomination from Varanasi for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. In the EC affidavit, PM Modi has disclosed that he cleared SSC Board Gujarat in 1967, the BA from University of Delhi in 1978 and the MA from Gujarat University in 1983.
Unibersity by itself is a stretch as the font for lower case “v” swivels into a shape like a “b”. But the spelling mistake in the PM’s father’s name can’t be wished away that easily. Further, Twitter users have claimed the BA degree issued in 1979 has a font that was not released by Microsoft until 1992. The inconsistencies in the two certificates have added fuel to the controversy.
After the Gujarat High Court order, Kejriwal tweeted in Hindi asking whether the country didn’t have the right to know how much the PM has studied and added that an illiterate or less educated PM was very dangerous for the country. The Delhi CM didn’t specify the dangers involved.
In the United Kingdom, there is no educational qualification required to stand for parliamentary elections. Citizenship and age requirements apply and naturalised citizens can stand for elections after a certain period of domicile. Similarly, in the United States of America, Germany and France, the requirements don’t specify educational qualifications.
For the Lok Sabha, the qualifications are equally meagre. The candidate should be 25 years of age, of sound mind and not be convicted for a term of two years or more. This part of the law is what has disqualified Rahul Gandhi from continuing to be the Lok Sabha MP from Wayanad. So, degree or no degree, it just doesn’t make a difference to contest an election.
In sharp contrast, it is not that easy to contest panchayat polls which has educational qualifications tied into it. In December 2015, a Supreme Court bench of Justice J Chelameswar and Justice Abhay Manohar Sapre upheld all amendments to the Haryana Panchayati Raj (Amendment) Act, 2015. Among the amendments introduced by the Manohar Lal Khattar government were making educational qualifications mandatory for panchayat election candidates: Males had to have cleared Class 10, women and Dalits needed to have cleared Class 8 and Class 5, respectively.
Other conditions included having a toilet at home and not defaulting on loans taken from cooperatives, etc. But these don’t seem to be in the picture for elections to higher bodies. The push for removing convicted criminals from contesting in Lok Sabha elections has made rapid strides, not so for people without degrees.
The unstated point of contention in the political sphere is that if people claim to have degrees they don’t, they would have been elected on a lie. The Opposition has had the degree chopstick to poke into the prime minister’s record. It has not complained to the Election Commission that facts contained in the PM’s affidavit are questionable, thereby opening ground for misrepresentation and perjury since it is a sworn document.
The problem the Opposition also has seems to be the prefix “Entire” which, as the Opposition sees, is some lackey’s sycophantic hurrah to please the master to grant the holder greater expertise. As if to underline that the gains of 2014 were thought up by a man who had mastered the entire scope available in political science, which by itself is a social studies subject and not a science.
Twitter has seen many punning on the order and claiming doctorates in multiple difficult and esoteric subjects. The buck stops with the Election Commission to end the controversy and consign it to the files. Digital or otherwise.
At the most, it can prove to be cannon fodder for the BJP to use against AAP, given that Kejriwal has been making statements against the PM on the floor of the Assembly and not outside, lest he be sued for defamation like Rahul Gandhi. AAP has been doubly distressed with the jailing of both Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain in different cases.
But in the smoke and mirrors of realpolitik, the presence or absence of a degree or a post-graduate degree is of no consequence for the masses at large. It is only the literate and the cognoscenti who will breathe fire and fury on social media. The educated, the barely literate and the illiterate know who they vote for, and why they vote for them.
—The writer is Editor, IndiaLegalLive.com and APNLive.com