Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has triggered a new controversy by taking a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his lack of academic qualifications. Speaking at an election rally in Madhya Pradesh, Mann invoked an old TV advertisement for Coca-Cola as he said that uneducated nowadays meant Narendra Modi.
A former comedian-turned-politician said, “Someone asked me to read this out since I was coming to Madhya Pradesh. There used to be a line (in the past, which went like this; ‘thanda matlab coca-cola (Cold means Coca-Cola). And these days another line is getting popular, ‘uneducated means Narendra Modi.”
"ठंडा मतलब Coca Cola"
"अनपढ़ मतलब………. ?"– CM @BhagwantMann pic.twitter.com/JAVDGe39oL
— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) August 20, 2023
Mann’s political boss in the Aam Aadmi Party, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, has been taking potshots at Modi by accusing him of being uneducated. Modi’s dubious academic qualifications have dominated more media headlines recently after Unacdemy sacked a teacher, Karan Sangwan, for urging his students to never vote for uneducated people.
Even though Sangwan never mentioned Modi’s name, BJP supporters took to social media to demand his sacking for insulting the prime minister.
Justifying Sangwan’s sacking, Unacademy co-founder, Roman Saini, had said, “We are an education platform that is deeply committed to imparting quality education. To do this we have in place a strict Code of Conduct for all our educators with the intention of ensuring that our learners have access to unbiased knowledge.
“Our learners are at the centre of everything we do. The classroom is not a place to share personal opinions and views as they can wrongly influence them. In the current situation, we were forced to part ways with Karan Sangwan as he was in breach of the Code of Conduct.”
The controversy over Modi’s degree is likely to dominate both the state election and the next year’s Lok Sabha election campaigns.