Modi's degree: restore officer's portfolio, say activists

 A group of activists have demanded for putting in public domain the reasons for reallocating work to an information commissioner after he ordered for allowing inspection of Delhi University’s degree records of 1978 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi completed his graduation.

The activists, including Aruna Roy, urged Chief Information Commissioner Radha Krishna Mathur to restore the charge of Information Commissioner Madabhushanam Sridhar Acharyulu in case there was no “compelling and valid reasons” for taking away from him the charge of hearing the Right to Information (RTI) petitions pertaining to the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry.

“This decision is being widely perceived as emanating from political interference in the functioning of the Central Information Commission (CIC) since it was taken within weeks of the commissioner’s order,” they underlined in a joint letter to Mathur on Thursday.

The decision “also appears to be sudden” since on December 29, 2016, the CIC in its order of allocation of work had allowed Acharyulu to retain the charge of hearing RTI petitions pertaining to the HRD Ministry, they pointed out.

“This perception is extremely worrying as it compromises the autonomy of the CIC, which has been set up under the RTI Act as an autonomous and empowered institution to dispose matters relating to peoples’ fundamental right to information,” they added.