Bringing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s degrees back into the spotlight is a Facebook post by Jayanti Patel, a former Professor at the Gujarat University, who said there “were no such papers” as the PM then supposedly appeared for.
In his Facebook post which has since been deleted, Patel does remember Modi the student. Patel was responding to an Indian Express report which quotes the VC of the Gujarat University stating the subjects Modi took while attempting to clear his M.A.
“However, there seems something wrong with the names of the papers, to my knowledge, there were no such papers offered in part-2 to internal or external students. I was on faculty of department of Political Science and used to teach there, 1969-1993 June,” says his post.
Patel went on further to say that Modi’s attendance in classes was low and so he did not grant his term in his own class but didn’t know if someone else condoned it. “Of course others may have granted it but he (Modi) was advised to appear externally henceforth,” he adds.
Last year, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, who is engaged in a constant tussle with the BJP at the Centre had questioned the authenticity of the Prime Minister’s educational credentials.
At a later press conference, BJP President Amit Shah and Cabinet Minister Arun Jaitley had come out and slammed the AAP and other political parties for ‘lowering public discourse’ by raising the question. After Shah and Jaitley presented the degrees, the AAP then went after Modi’s B.A. degree from Delhi Uinversity, claiming that was a fake.
Kejriwal also went after Modi’s M.A. degree. After the Delhi CM accused the CIC of withholding information about it, the Gujarat University VC told the Express (the report that Prof. Patel cited) “that Modi had scored 499 out of total 800 in MA (237 out of 400 in first year, and 262 out of 400 in second year)”.
VC M.N. Patel refused to give a copy of the degree to the newspaper, however.
