Why the PM Should Lead by Example and Make His Degrees Public

New Delhi: There has been no prime minister in India other than Narendra Modi who has let a small concern against him linger on for years. Modi’s radio silence on the issue of his educational certificates has only fuelled whispers about the authenticity of his academic credentials. Now that the Delhi University has gone ahead and successfully defended its position in the Supreme Court to keep Modi’s B.A. degree under wraps, speculations about the prime minister’s degrees have again gained ground, even as he has doggedly refused to finish the issue, once and for all, by asking the varsities to publish them.

On August 25, 2025, the Delhi high court set aside a 2016 order by the Central Information Commission (CIC) that had allowed the RTI applicant to examine the 1978 undergraduate records of the Delhi University, the year when Modi is supposed to have finished his B.A. degree. The university argued that student records were kept in fiduciary capacity and could not be disclosed if it doesn’t involve any larger public interest. Curiously, the varsity was represented by the solicitor-general of India Tushar Mehta, indicating that the prime minister’s office took active interest in the case.

Although the RTI applicant argued that the disclosure of the prime minister’s educational details serves greater public good, the high court ruled in favour of the university, upholding its contention that academic records are “personal information” and should be treated as private unless educational qualifications are required to fulfill eligibility criterion for a public office.

Effectively, the court upheld Mehta’s argument that while the university had no problems in showing Modi’s undergraduate degree to the court, it should not be made available to people who are seeking political publicity or are driven by other vested interests.

The high court curiously cited a controversial clause in the new Data Protection Act that has amended the RTI Act to deny “private” information of an individual or a company. The new Act weakens the RTI Act greatly and has faced severe criticisms from rights activists. Although its rules are yet to be notified, the court went ahead to factor it in to allow Delhi University to withhold information about Modi’s degree.

The case has caught public attention from time to time since 2016, since the CIC ordered disclosure of the 1978 student records. The Delhi high court had stayed the CIC order in 2017 itself after the university appealed against the CIC order.

Before the Delhi high court, the Gujarat high court had given reprieve to the prime minister in March 2023, when it had similarly quashed a 2016 CIC order that had directed the Gujarat University to disclose Modi’s M.A. degree to Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal.

The matter had really blown out of proportion after the BJP, in trying to contain speculations over Modi’s educational details, had made public Modi’s M.A. certificate that interestingly showed him having completed a graduate degree in “Entire Political Science”. The disclosure made the speculations worse for Modi in the public domain, as hardly anybody had heard of a post-graduate course like ‘entire’ political science.

Around the same time, an old video of one of Modi’s interviews came to light in which he was seen admitting that he had never attended college because of his devotion to political work.

Irrespective of what one makes out of the controversy, there is a larger public concern at play here. Given that a number of politicians are facing scrutiny at the moment for having allegedly provided fake information or fake degrees to the Election Commission of India, the concern is one of public propriety. 

For instance, after having fought tooth and nail over a similar controversy, Modi’s former cabinet minister Smriti Irani, too, got some relief when the Delhi high court’s Justice Sachin Datta – the same judge who granted relief to the prime minister – set aside a 2017 CIC order directing the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to "facilitate inspection” and “provide certified copies” of Irani’s Class X and XII records. Justice Datta found no “implicit public interest” in Irani’s case too. 

Irani, too, had been in the middle of a controversy over her educational qualifications when her poll affidavits of 2004 and 2014 showed some apparent discrepancies. In 2004 Lok Sabha elections, when she contested from Chandni Chowk in Delhi, she claimed to have completed her B.A. degree from Delhi University’s School of Correspondence in 1996.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, however, when she contested from Amethi, Uttar Pradesh, her affidavit declared the following: “Bachelor of Commerce Part-1, School of Open Learning (Correspondence), University of Delhi-1994.” Later, her remark that she had a degree from Yale University in the US also drew a lot of public scrutiny. 

The fact is that not only these two BJP leaders but a number of other politicians have been facing public scrutiny over allegedly false declaration of their educational qualifications, the row over AAP MLAs Surendra Singh and Jitendra Singh Tomar’s degrees being cases in point. 

Some legislators in Uttar Pradesh also have been in the middle of such controversies in recent years.

The prime minister could voluntarily make his degrees public, and lead by example. Such an act would not only encourage transparency but also challenge his political opponents. However, he has only shown an adamant reluctance to do so, to the extent that he has appointed the solicitor-general of India to ascertain that his degrees are not made available to the public. 

The high court’s decision has come at a time when a large section of 65 lakh electors in Bihar, who have been wrongfully deleted in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise is scampering against time to prove their citizenship through legitimate documents, one of which is a matriculation certificate in the poorly-literate state. 

The Modi government clearly has passed on the onus on common people to prove their citizenship beyond any doubt. In such a context, the prime minister bears an additional responsibility to end the controversy over his own degrees, and silence his critics by showing that he has nothing to hide.

It is high time that he should come out clean of this unnecessary row for the sake of providing good leadership, if not for anything else.

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