The Central Information Commission on Tuesday asked the Central Board of Secondary Examination to allow Union minister Smriti Irani’s Class 10 and 12 board exam records to be examined, dismissing CBSE’s opposition that “personal information” cannot be disclosed, PTI reported.

The commission has also directed the office of the minister of textiles and Delhi’s Holy Child Auxilium School, from where Irani claimed to have graduated, to provide her examination roll number to CBSE’s Ajmer division so her records can be traced from the database yet to be digitised”. The Ajmer office has the board exam records for 1991 and 1993.

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The CIC wants “certified copies of documents” to be inspected within 60 days, Information Commissioner Sridhar Acharyulu said in his order. “Disclosure of the details of a particular candidate contained in the degree or certificate register cannot cause any unwarranted invasion of privacy of the certificate holder,” he said.

“Smriti Zubin Irani, being an elected MP and holding the Constitutional office of a Union minister, is a public authority under the RTI Act...She must have fulfilled her statutory responsibility to submit an affidavit declaring her educational status,” the information commissioner said.

On October 18, Delhi’s Patiala court had dismissed a petition that had called for Irani to be summoned in connection with a case related to her educational qualification. A freelance writer had filed a case against the former human resource development minister in 2015, claiming that the information on the degrees she had provided before the 2004 Lok Sabha elections differed from her 2011 Rajya Sabha nomination papers in Gujarat.

The CIC, on January 8, had directed Delhi University officials to allow the inspection of records of students who had secured their BA degree in 1978, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s. The order, passed by Acharyulu, had dismissed DU Central Public Information Officer Meenakshi Sahay’s denial of an RTI query on the grounds that the information was personal, saying the rejection had “neither merit, nor legality”.