Have 'all relevant information' on foreign students: JNU

The JNU administration on Wednesday said it had "relevant information" on the nationality of all the 301 foreign students enrolled in the varsity, contrary to the claim made by an RTI activist.

The Right to Information (RTI) application was filed by filed by Kota resident Sujeet Swami. According to the RTI response, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) said that it did not have the information on the nationality of 82 foreign students.

While the JNU alleged that Swami gave "incomplete data" to the media, the activist hit back saying the varsity's "RTI handling system" was deeply flawed and dared the Vice Chancellor to take legal action against him.

The varsity "has all the relevant information regarding the foreign students who have registered in the various academic programmes in the university," it said.

"When an RTI comes, a time limit is given to provide the answers... The RTI has a set of different questions pertaining to the different branches of the university," the varsity said. The RTI question was related to the varsity's admission, evaluation and CIS branch.

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"Different branches of the university keep their data in different formats. The Central Public Information Office directly sends the data available in their respective branch to the applicant," the varsity said. The RTI applicant gave the inputs to the media before getting all relevant information asked by him, the varsity said.

"No conclusion should be drawn on the basis of incomplete data from the sources. It is unfortunate that report was published without getting complete information," the varsity said. Swami, however, said that nowhere was it mentioned that the information he had received from the varsity was "incomplete or partial".

"In its response, the varsity clearly stated that information regarding nationality of 82 students was 'not available'. If the varsity had lied, then it's a serious matter and all RTI replies given by the JNU till date should be probed," he said.

"The JNU's RTI handling system is deeply flawed. I was not informed that different branches of the university will be replying to my queries... If I have indeed misled the media, then the JNU administration should take legal action against me," Swami said.

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