Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia conceded that his party had made a mistake by not verifying Jitendra Singh Tomar’s ceritificate.
“We can only say that we did a mistake in verifying Tomar’s candidature. This confusion can happen with anyone. When the fake degree issue was raised, we asked him about it but he showed us his degrees, an RTI document and an affidavit to this effect. After that all that we could have done was leave our work and visit the university to verify the document,” Sisodia was quoted by IBN as saying.
Sisodia’s comment will be seen as the admission of guilt by Aam Aadmi Party, which had defended their former law minister soon after the controversy around his fake degrees were reported. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was, however, quick to accept Tomar’s resignation when the latter expressed his wish to do so.
Tomar, who was arrested on June 9, has all along maintained that his degree was real. Delhi Jal Board Vice Chiarman Kapil Mishra was later appointed the new law minister. Earlier this week, the former Delhi law minister’s wife told a news agency that one could become a minister even without a degree and ‘one could become minister even after 12th standard.”