The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on April 2 questioned the authenticity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s undergraduate and postgraduate degree certificates. The AAP said that while there was no educational qualification required to hold the post of PM, if the degrees were found to be fake, Mr. Modi may lose his membership as an MP and would be unable to contest elections, according to rules of the Election Commission of India (EC).
The Delhi BJP reacted by saying that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had lost his “mental balance” and was raking up the issue to divert attention from the “many scams” of his government.
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Addressing a press conference, senior AAP Leader and Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh asked the BJP to come clean on whether the Prime Minister had obtained a B.A. degree in 1979 and an M.A. degree in 1983 as the degree certificates shown by Home Minister Amit Shah at an earlier press conference raised questions over their authenticity. Mr. Singh also played a video clip of Mr. Modi who, in a speech in 2005-06 to teachers in Gujarat, had said that he had not received any education after school. Last week, the Gujarat High Court imposed a fine on Mr. Kejriwal for demanding to see the Prime Minister’s degree.
Questioning the authenticity of the degree allegedly issued by Gujarat University, Mr. Singh said that at one place in the certificate, “university” is spelt as “unibersity”, and that the font used for “Master of Arts” was a font that was introduced only in 1992.
Delhi Minister Saurabh Bhardwaj also addressed a press conference on the same issue and said that verification of university degrees is a routine process and thousands of degrees are verified on a daily basis before admissions or for jobs. “Why is this routine exercise turning into a problem for the BJP? It can be ended if Mr. Modi just presents his degrees,” Mr. Bhardwaj said.
Delhi BJP chief Virendra Sachdeva hit back saying that Mr. Kejriwal was trying to “divert political discourse from his corruption saga” and was raising “fake stories regarding the PM”.
Calling Mr. Kejriwal a “scamster who directs scams without letting any onus come on himself”, Mr. Sachdeva said, “The entire world thought that Manish Sisodia and Satyendar Jain were his close aides but the truth is that he used them. He conned them into signing every fraudulent deal. Today, they are in jail while he is enjoying power and ill-gotten wealth.”
The BJP leader said that Mr. Kejriwal had “crafted his game” well and never kept any portfolio with himself. “In fact, he never himself signed even the files going to the L-G (Lieutenant Governor) and instead made his P.S. (Personal Secretary) or Manish Sisodia sign them. The Chief Minister knows how to use and throw a person,” Mr. Sachdeva said.
He, however, claimed that some people had “exposed” the AAP supremo’s role in the excise policy scam, which is why he was trying to divert public attention now. “But Kejriwal will soon land in jail,” Mr. Sachdeva said.
