Roshan Shah
Gujarat University, which has resisted every attempt to seek information about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s educational qualification took barely few hours to make the information available, albeit selectively to Ahmedabad Mirror.
However, in its haste to silence Modi’s critics and create positive impression about the prime minister, the authorities committed several blunders.
This is a blunder that will come to haunt both Modi and the GU in time to come.
Modi also got engaged at age of 13 with Jashodaben, but followed admission like Anandiben from school to college and, at 17, he got into pre-science (as per TOI and Mirror Story) in 1967 in M N College Visnagar when Anandiben was doing Msc Chemistry.
Family didn’t wait till 21 and got him married at 18 to Jashodaben. That marriage did not go well and Modi even left Pre-Science and did Arts. Many doubts exist on this story also as he says he did his degree from Gujarat University but M N College is not affiliated to Gujarat University.
There are others who say that he left school in grade 8.
Gujarat Education Minister Bhupendra Sinh Chudasma, meanwhile has said that all requisite records of the prime minister’s degrees were available.
“If and when any authorised institution seeks the information, we are ready to provide the mark sheets. But so far, no one has approached us,” he said. However, when Mirror correspondent saw copy of Modi’s MA-II marksheet and wanted to take photo of the document, the GU authority allegedly did not allow the correspondent to click a picture of the same.
What this bhakt education minister doesn’t know is that many RTIs have been filed and rejected in the pat. I was the first activist to have filed RTI request asking for information on Modi’s degrees in 2013, but it was turned down.
Another RTI activist, Parag Patel did the same and, like me, his was too rejected.
What about those activists? Why not give information to them?
To me, whichever way you look at, the documents made available to media by authorities are nothing carefully fabricated.
There’s also a question on how the authorities have decided to leak the information, which they ought to have made available to Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, after the CIC asked them to do so.
It’s unfortunate that our PM is still depending on his media management skills to bail himself out of this embarrassment.
Let’s look at this angle now.
On 29 May 1962, Anandiben and Mafatlal (Madhuvir) Patel married but she enrolled in MSc (graduated in 1967) with her father’s middle name as per records of MN College which means that records of MN College are unreliable or Anandiben is unreliable.
It’s pretty common for a woman in Gujarat to use husband’s name subsequent to marriage. Anandiben got married at age of 21 and there was no reason for her not to use her husband’s middle name at age of 26 i.e 3 years after marriage as she would have enrolled in MSc in/around year 1965. This leads to suspicion that the authorities have goofed up big time in their bid to save Modi from more embarrassment.
Also, M N College, Visnagar is affiliated to Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University, Patan and not Gujarat University. Clearly, the officials don’t know how to even fabricate records.
I would urge Kejriwal to insist on personally checking and verifying the records by visiting the university. He’s entitled to ask for such privilege under the existing provisions of the RTI Act.
Views expressed here are the author’s own and jantakareporter.con doesn’t endorse them
