THE JHARKHAND STORY DESK
New Delhi, Jan 16: The defamation cases brought against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and MP Sanjay Singh for remarks they made regarding Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s educational degree were stayed by the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The trial court’s proceedings were put on hold for four weeks by a bench of Justices BR Gavai and Sandeep Mehta.
The Supreme Court asked the Gujarat High Court to promptly address a petition for interim relief filed by the concerned parties in the case.
In response to a plea from Singh asking for the case to be transferred to a trial court outside of the State of Gujarat, the top court issued its ruling. The bench declined to consider the plea for a transfer.
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What is the case?
After the Chief Information Commissioner’s order to provide them with information about the Prime Minister’s degrees under the RTI Act was overturned by the Gujarat High Court, Gujarat University Registrar Piyush Patel filed a defamation suit against Kejriwal and AAP leader Sanjay Singh regarding their purported remarks.
In his case, Patel alleged that both leaders went after the university over Modi’s degrees by making “defamatory” remarks at press conferences and on the microblogging site X.
On March 31, 2023, the Gujarat High Court nullified a 2016 directive from the Central Information Commission that instructed Gujarat University to disclose information to Kejriwal about PM Modi’s degree.
Kejriwal and Singh were summoned by a Gujarat Metropolitan court in a defamation case due to their disparaging and cynical remarks regarding educational degree of PM Modi.
An interim stay on these proceedings was denied by the Gujarat High Court in August of last year, a decision that the highest court thereafter upheld.
The University asserted that the comments made by the AAP leader, targeting Gujarat University, were defamatory and adversely affected the institution’s reputation, which has earned public acclaim.
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