The Gujarat High Court on Thursday rejected the review application filed by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over a Gujarat University petition linked to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s educational degrees. Kejriwal was seeking a review of the high court’s March order on the matter.
In its March order, the court had allowed a Gujarat University petition and quashed an order of the Central Information Commission (CIC) that had directed the university to “search for information” regarding PM Modi’s educational degrees. While dismissing the plea, the court had also imposed a penalty of Rs 25,000.
In his review petition, Kejriwal had also challenged the cost of Rs 25,000 that was imposed on him by the court for persisting with the matter of the PM’s degrees.
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Kejriwal, in his review petition, submitted that while the court had recorded that PM Modi’s degree is available on the university’s website following submissions to that effect by Solicitor General of India Tushar Mehta – while he was representing the university – “upon a scan of the said website…(it) is found that the said ‘degree’ is not available, but a document referred to as OR (Office Register) is displayed”. Kejriwal also submitted that the display of “degree” on the university’s official website is taken as the preliminary and main ground for seeking a review of the court’s earlier order. He alleged that with the degree not being available on the website, the judgment thus “suffers from the error apparent on the face of the record and permitting them would lead to failure of justice”.
Mehta, while opposing the review application, had added that if aggrieved by the high court’s order, the remedy for Kejriwal would lie in appeal and not a review and had further insisted to the court that cost be imposed even for filing review, terming it to be “only an attempt to keep the pot boiling for something which the law prohibits”.
The court of Justice Biren Vaishnav, while dismissing the review on Thursday, imposed no costs.
The detailed verdict remains to be made public.
