AAP Chief Spokesperson and Cabinet Minister Shri Saurabh Bhardwaj on Thursday showed his educational degrees to the public as part of Aam Aadmi Party’s “Degree Dikhao Campaign”. The campaign involves AAP leaders publicly sharing their educational qualifications every day. While revealing his educational degrees, Shri Saurabh Bhardwaj asked why the BJP gets so bothered every time a question is asked about the educational degrees of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. He pointed out that the Central Information Commission (CIC) had said that if an RTI is filed asking for the educational degree of the Prime Minister, then it should be provided to the applicant. But the Gujarat University went against this decision and even further approached the Gujarat High Court on this matter.
Shri Saurabh Bhardwaj wondered why the issue regarding the educational qualifications of PM Narendra Modi had been made into such a secret, and asked if it was even necessary to make this matter to the court. He further also hit out at the statement made by the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi Shri Vinai Kumar Saxena where he stated that a ‘degree is only a receipt showing that money has been spent’.
He further said that possession or the non-possession of a degree is not everything in the world. He added that if a person was born to a family that could afford to send their children to school and university then they are likely to have one or more degrees. But he said that the important question to ask here is why is revealing a degree being turned into such a secretive exercise.
He asked why it is so that until now not a single person has been found who can say that he was a batchmate of PM Narendra Modi in university. He further said that not a single person has been found who can claim to hold the same degree in ‘Entire Political Science’ that the PM has and has written the exam in university along with him.
He said that usually when someone has studied in college or university along with a person who is a public figure like PM Narendra Modi, they would happily come out and say it in public that they were his classmate. “Why is it that we are not able to find even one single person who can say that they were batchmates with PM Narendra Modi? No one has come out to the public and claimed that they were in the same examination hall as the PM. There is also so much mystery around his degree that it makes us wonder whether he actually went to a college or not? A lot of the decisions that he has taken as the PM also makes us wonder if there was any application of mind before taking such decisions,” he said.
Shri Saurabh Bhardwaj added that the Prime Minister has crores of followers on social media handles such as Facebook and Twitter, but not a single person there has claimed to have studied with the PM. Pointing out that in the modern world, most people tend to be on social media and they are usually very happy to claim that they have studied with a famous personality.
Giving his own example, the Delhi Cabinet Minister shared his Facebook profile with the media, and pointed out a couple of his batchmates from University such as Maneesh Kohli, Shib Shankar Datta and Akshay Tyagi. “These are just a couple of my batchmates and if a media person goes to them and asks them whether they have studied with Saurabh Bhardwaj, they will happily say yes. You can also see that on their respective Facebook profiles the name of their college and mine are the same. Why is it that we cannot find anyone on social media who has studied with the Prime Minister?” he asked.
