BY SAM ALFAN.
High Court Judge George Odunga has declined to issue orders compelling UON to include Meru Senator Mithika Linturi’s name in Friday’s list of graduands.
Judge Odunga says Linturi has not convinced the court what irreparable damage he will suffer if he does not graduate.
He further directed parties to expedite the case.
The case will be heard on February 20.
The ruling means that Linturi will not graduate this Friday.
Meru Senator Mithika Linturi said that the EACC is behind his fake papers saga.
The senator has challenged a decision by the university to revoke a degree he acquired there.
The consequence of the revocation stopped his pursuit for a masters degree in law at the same university.
It is alleged that he presented fake papers to acquire admission.
Linturi says that his tribulations started way back during the campaign period when his political opponents Milton Mugambi Imanyara and then Meru Governor Peter Munya swore that they would do anything to ensure that his name was not in the ballot box for the 8th August general elections.
He claims that the political war was taken over by EACC.
Through lawyer Prof Tom Ojienda, Linturi says that he was summoned by EACC to appear before it for investigations on the 30th of May 2017.
“EACC had conclusively investigated the allegations that Linturi self-declaration forms for 2013 elections filed with IEBC were falsified,”reads court papers.
According to Linturi he was admitted at the University of Nairobi on 3rd January 2014 and was positioned to graduate on 22nd of this month with a Bachelors of Laws Degree.
However on 30th of November just 21 days to his confirmed graduation while watching news he learnt with shock that the University had deregistered him for allegedly having fake degree from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University.
He now wants the court to quash the decision dated November 30 by University if Nairobi to deregister and discontinue him as its student.
Similarly, he wants the University compelled to reinstate his name in the graduation list for December 22 this year.
He says that if the orders are not granted then he will not be able to graduate.
Linturi says that UoN failed to inform him in writing that it was investigating his degree from Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University with the aim of deregistering him as a student in violation of Article 47 of the constitution.
He says that it was illegal, unreasonable and an utter show of bad faith for UON to de-register the applicant without conducting its own independent investigations informing him and at the very least affording him his right to be heard.
He claims that the actions of UoN tell of nothing but a public body that has allowed itself to be used illegally by the EACC in an utter unapologetic show of abuse of power to harass, intimidate and violate his rights to education
