The Gujarat High Court has dismissed Arvind Kejriwal’s appeal against a March 2023 single judge order that quashed the Central Information Commission’s 2016 direction on disclosure of information about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s degrees and imposed costs of Rs 25,000 on him, saying it found no error in the judgment, and has also dismissed the stay application.
Ahmedabad: The Gujarat High Court on Tuesday dismissed the appeal of Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal against the order of a Single Judge that had imposed costs of Rs 25,000 on him in connection with the disclosure of information about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s degree [Arvind Kejriwal v. Gujarat University and Others].
A Division Bench of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice D.N. Ray pronounced the order in court on September 29, 2026. The Bench said it found no error in any of the submissions of the appellant that could be made out in the impugned judgment. It dismissed the appeal, made no further order as to costs, and dismissed the civil application for stay. The detailed order is awaited, and this report is based on the operative part pronounced in court, as reported.
Background of the case
Kejriwal appealed against the March 2023 judgment of a Single Judge, which had quashed a 2016 direction of the Central Information Commission (CIC) requiring Gujarat University to provide information about degrees in the name of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The University had approached the Single Judge to challenge the CIC’s direction.
The Single Judge held that information about the Prime Minister’s educational degrees was exempt from disclosure under Sections 8(1)(e) and 8(1)(j) of the Right to Information Act, 2005, in the absence of any larger public interest warranting disclosure. The Single Judge also imposed costs of Rs 25,000 on Kejriwal.
The arguments on costs
At the hearing last week, Kejriwal’s counsel, in rejoinder, pointed to paragraph 40 of the Single Judge’s judgment imposing the costs. He said that the only thing recorded against Kejriwal was that he had “persisted” with the matter although the degree was available on the University’s website. He argued that if the University had already put the degree on its website, there was no cause of action in the writ petition, that Kejriwal had not filed the RTI application, and that he had been made a respondent when the Court took up the matter on its own motion. He added that he was a bystander who had not persisted with anything, and that the University itself had said that what is on its website is a record of the degree and not the degree itself.
In an earlier hearing, the University had urged the High Court to impose further costs on Kejriwal, to ensure that the RTI Act is not misused and that government officials are not made to spend productive working hours on requests that do not serve the purpose of the Act.
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The outcome
By dismissing the appeal, the Division Bench has left the Single Judge’s judgment, including the Rs 25,000 costs, undisturbed. It declined to make any further order on costs against the appellant, and so did not grant the University’s request for additional costs, according to the reported operative order.
Why it matters
The order upholds the March 2023 ruling that information about the Prime Minister’s degrees is exempt from disclosure under the RTI Act when no larger public interest is shown. The reasons the Division Bench gave for finding no error are not yet available, and will be known only from the detailed order.
This ruling concerns the Gujarat proceedings on the CIC’s 2016 direction. Separate appeals on a related question are pending before the Delhi High Court, and criminal defamation proceedings involving Kejriwal are also before the courts in Gujarat.
Case Title: Arvind Kejriwal v. Gujarat University and Others [R/CA/2234/2023 in F/LPA/36863/2023 in R/SCA/9476/2016]
Bench: Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice D.N. Ray, Gujarat High Court
Date of Order: September 29, 2026