NLSIU attempts to evade providing information under RTI

Initially on an RTI application filed by Prashant Reddy seeking reasons for Sidharth Chauhan's dismissal, the CPIO, National Law School of India University (NLSIU) had denied that Chauhan was ever dismissed from his employment at NLSIU. Reddy filed an appeal attaching a copy of Chauhan's dismissal letter and sought reasons for his dismissal. The Vice Chancellor replied stating that since the dismissal letter didn't use the word "dismissal" and hence no reasons were required.

Reddy had earlier requested the Vice Chancellor, NLSIU to appoint somebody else as the First Appellate Authority since most of the queries pertained to decisions taken by him and there might be chance of his decision being biased. However this request was never honoured.

Reddy's appeal also sought a copy of the resolution passed by the Executive Council of the University authorizing the Vice Chancellor to dismiss Chauhan. This has also been rejected by the Vice-Chancellor.

The appeal also raised several queries regarding the manner in which the Vice Chancellor was using the Grievance Redressal Mechanism to inflate grades of students. In particular, the appeal asked for information pertaining to the number of students who had had their grades changed under the mechanism and the names of the evaluators conducting the re-evaluation. The Vice Chancellor rejected this request and upheld the CPIO's rejection of Reddy's request, without assigning any particular reason.

Lastly, the appeal sought action taken on issues raised by Shreya Rao, particularly against students found cheating during examinations. A request was made for a copy of the report by the Disciplinary Committee but this was rejected by the Vice Chancellor. Instead of the report of the Disciplinary Committee, Reddy was supplied a copy of replies of the students to the Committee.

Reddy told Live Law, "Given that it was an open book examination, the explanation given by the students in their defense appears to be reasonable. We have no intention of agitating this particular RTI any further."

All the RTI replies are available for download below.