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The Delhi High Court has set aside a Central Information Commission order that had directed Delhi University to disclose information about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bachelor of Arts degree. The university had asked for the information panel’s order to be quashed, claiming that a Right to Information application seeking that the document be made public was politically motivated.

An activist, Neeraj Kumar, had sought details about students from Delhi University’s BA programme in 1978, including their roll numbers, marks and if they passed or failed the course. The university had denied the request, after which he had approached the Central Information Commission.

In a separate case on Monday, the High Court also set aside a Central Information Commission order from 2017 directing the Central Board of School Education to disclose details about former Union minister Smriti Irani’s Class 10 and 12 records to a Right to Information applicant. Read more.

The Supreme Court has stayed criminal proceedings against psephologist Sanjay Kumar for an erroneous claim he had made and subsequently retracted about voter numbers in Maharashtra. A bench headed by Chief Justice BR Gavai granted interim relief to Kumar in response to a petition that two first information reports against him be quashed.

During the hearing, Kumar’s counsel told the court that he was a person with impeccable integrity. The counsel said that the researcher had deleted the social media post in which he made the claim and had apologised.

The police in Maharashtra’s Nagpur and Nashik had filed cases against Kumar, a psephologist with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, for his erroneous claim.

Kumar had on August 17 claimed that there had been significant drops in voters in two Assembly constituencies in Maharashtra between the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the state polls held later that year. Read more.

The Supreme Court restrained a trial court from taking cognisance of the Haryana Police’s chargesheet in a first information report against Ashoka University Associate Professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad for his comments about Operation Sindoor. The court also quashed all the proceedings in a second FIR against Mahmudabad in which a closure report had been filed.

The bench said that no charges should be framed against Mahmudabad.

The order was passed after the Haryana Police told the bench that a closure report had been filed in one case, while a chargesheet was filed in the other one.

The two cases were filed against Mahmudabad for his comments about the media briefings on the Indian military operation against terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir initiated in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. Read more.

A group of retired judges has described Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s criticism of the Opposition INDIA bloc’s vice presidential candidate B Sudershan Reddy for the 2011 Salwa Judum judgement as “unfortunate”. Shah had claimed that former judge B Sudershan Reddy had helped the Maoist insurgency by delivering the 2011 Salwa Judum judgement.

On Sunday, 18 former judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts – including Justices AK Patnaik, Abhay Oka, Gopala Gowda, Vikramjit Sen, Kurien Joseph, Madan B Lokur and J Chelameswar – issued a joint statement criticising Shah’s remarks.

They said that Reddy’s 2011 ruling that struck down the practice of Salwa Judum “nowhere supports, either expressly or by compelling implication…Naxalism or its ideology”.

In 2005, the Salwa Judum, a state-supported civil vigilante campaign, was launched with an aim of targeting villages seen as harbouring Maoists. Human rights activists alleged that under the campaign, people were coerced into leaving their villages and supporting the vigilante group. Read more.

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