New Delhi: The Delhi high court on Monday (August 25) set aside a 2016 order of the Central Information Commission (CIC) directing the Delhi University to disclose information regarding the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bachelor degree, observing that it was “personal information”, LiveLaw reported.Justice Sachin Datta, pronouncing the order, allowed Delhi University’s plea, filed in 2017, against the CIC order which, based on an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by one Neeraj, had sought an inspection of records of the students who had passed BA programme in 1978 – the year Modi is stated to have cleared the examination.The judgement comes almost six months after the high court had completed the hearing on February 27 and reserved the verdict.In a 175-page combined judgment, Justice Datta also set aside the CIC’s order directing the CBSE to share Class X and XII records of BJP leader Smriti Irani to a RTI applicant, stating that there was “no implicit public interest in respect of the information sought.”He observed that mark sheets or degree certificate or academic records of any individual, whether they are holder of public office or not, are in the nature of “personal information”. “It is unambiguously clear that the ‘marks obtained’, grades, and answer sheets etc. are in the nature of personal information and are protected under Section 8(1)(j) of the RTI Act, subject to an assessment of overriding public interest,” Justice Datta said.Previously, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the varsity, had argued that the purpose of RTI was not to satiate the curiosity of a third party.On the other hand, Senior Advocate Sanjay Hegde, representing the RTI applicant, had submitted that the information sought would normally be published by any university and used to also be published on notice boards, varsity’s website and newspapers, LiveLaw reported.He had opposed the submission made by Mehta that information of students was held by a university in a “fiduciary capacity” and could not be divulged “to a stranger” as the same is exempted from disclosure in law, the report stated. In 2016, following former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s allegations that the prime minister’s educational degree was “fake”, Amit Shah, then BJP president and now the Union home minister, had put out what he presented as the prime minister’s bachelor’s and master’s degree certificates.The debate around Modi’s degrees has renewed at a time when when there is mounting pressure for citizens to produce all manner of documents to prove their citizenship.Reacting to the Delhi high court’s order, the Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh, in a post on X, said, “It is simply incomprehensible why the educational degree details of this particular PM should be kept a complete secret when such details of everyone else have always been and continue to be public.”RTI and transparency activist Anjali Bharadwaj told The Wire that the high court order is “disappointing”. “It is crucial that such information is made public and there is transparency in the matter,” she said.“The [Delhi high court’s] order is very disappointing because in a democracy, people have the right to information. Supreme Court has said it in the past that all candidates contesting elections need to disclose their criminal, ecudational and financial records on an affidavit. So that people can verify it if they wish to,” she said.“We hope that the prime minister himself asks the Delhi University to at least put out his roll number and marks from the 1978 list of graduates,” she added.