Writes to Kejriwal over degree row, says allegations ‘baseless’
Delhi law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar on Thursday clarified his position on the fake degree controversy and shown all details and documents to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. In a written statement to Kejriwal, Tomar said the allegation of it being fake was “baseless” and intended to “malign” his image and that of the party.
The ‘bogus degree’ issue of the law Minister has snowballed into a major political controversy with the Opposition parties demanding the Minister’s scalp. Tomar has stated that his counsel will submit all documents and details by the next date of hearing. In the meantime, he would send his brother to Faizabad and Bhagalpur to obtain necessary documents to clarify his position further.
Kejriwal had on Tuesday asked Tomar to clarify his stand on the matter after Bihar’s Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University submitted in Delhi High Court that his provisional certificate was “fabricated” and “does not exist in the institution’s record”. The controversy has dented the clean image of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal as Opposition parties demanded Tomar’s resignation and an investigation into the matter but the Minister has called the allegations “baseless”.
It is learnt that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wants him to retain till the court’s order in the matter while some Cabinet colleagues are in favour that Tomar resign in the wake of the phony degree controversy. Tomar’s undergraduate degree was fake, an RTI reply has revealed, two days after a Bihar-based university said a provisional certificate he used to enrol as a lawyer was fabricated, causing deep embarrassment to the AAP.
Dr Ram Manohar lohia Avadh University in Faizabad and one of its affiliated institutes, the KS Saket Postgraduate College in Ayodhya, said the Minister’s B.Sc second-year marksheet was fake and his degree invalid after a Ghaziabad resident filed a Right To Information (RTI) query. In fact, the college said 48-year-old Tomar never took admission in the institution.
In reply to the RTI application, the college has accepted that Tomar obtained Bachelors of Science degree between 1986 and 1988. But the college also mentioned that B.Sc first-year roll number mentioned by the applicant is wrong and as per record, his roll number is 40717. The college also mentioned that Tomar completed B.Sc second-year from the college but the roll number mentioned in the application is wrong and as per the record his roll number is 31518. It was a two-year course.
In the reply, the university had indicated that Tomar’s graduation degree under roll number 31331 was fake. Replying to which Tomar wrote: “It may be interesting to note that this reply based on almost 30 year-old record has been furnished by the university within a day of an application to this effect being filed by Pradeep.”
The law Minister said, “As it was getting clear that he (Nand Kishore Garg) was likely to lose his seat (Assembly election), he started resorting to dirty tricks to malign my name. When nothing else seemed to work, he filed an election petition in High Court raising questions with regards to the authenticity of my graduation and law degrees.”
Claiming the documents furnished by Garg as “incorrect,” Tomar said, “Garg runs a couple of universities in Delhi as well as Himachal Pradesh and due to his contacts with other universities, he has been able to obtain certain documents by citing incorrect particulars. These incorrect documents have been cited as evidence in the election petition.” Tomar said senior BJP leaders are trying to sully his image by resorting to falsehood. They are trying to “dent the image of our party through these baseless allegations”.
Rubbishing media reports that the Bar Council of India has issued a notice to him as to why his licence to practice as an advocate should not be suspended, Tomar said he had filed an application on February 16 to the Bar Council of India for suspension of his licence for practising as an advocate upon his nomination as law Minister. Tomar also enclosed the copy of an RTI filed by Garg’s counsel Deepak Vohra with PG College, Ayodhya.