The abrupt removal of Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) from pro-active Central Information Commissioner Prof Madabhushanam Sridhar Acharyulu has been raising suspicions that he was `punished’ for allowing a question on the validity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s degree.

Incidentally, the charge of the Ministry was taken away from him by Chief Information Commissioner R K Mathur, just after two days he allowed inspection of Delhi University’s 1978 BA degree records was made public.

According to an order issued last evening, all complaints and appeals related to HRD Ministry will now be looked into by another Information Commissioner Manjula Parashar.

Prof Acharyulu, hails from Warangal of Telangana, started his career as a journalist and was teaching in prestigious Law University NALSAR in Hyderabad, before he was appointed as Information Commissioner, by the UPA government.

The latest order comes just days after another order on December 29 on allocation of work in which Acharyulu had retained the HRD Ministry. It was on December 21 that Acharyulu had ordered inspection of DU degree records of 1978, the year in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to the university, had got his degree.

However, Acharyulu declined to comment on this development. Last year, the university had denied these records to an RTI applicant, saying that it was the “personal information of the students concerned, the disclosure of which has no relationship to any public activity or interest”.

The Commission, however, said that matters relating to the education of a student — current or former — fall under the category of public interest. BJP leaders claimed last year that Modi had completed his BA in political science from the distance learning programme of the university in 1978. This was later corroborated by Delhi University registrar Tarun Das.

Incidentally, recently Acharyulu was also applied for the post of Chief Vigilance Commissioner and made futile attempts for this pivotal appointment.