After the BJP’s Smriti Irani was appointed the Minister for Human Resource Development in 2014 – despite losing in the Lok Sabha election – she caused an uproar more than once with discrepancies in her claims about her educational qualifications. The story around Irani’s graduate degree has taken some sharp turns over the years.
In 2004, Irani had claimed to have completed her Bachelor of Arts in 1996 from Delhi University (School of Correspondence). The original documents – somewhat conveniently – are apparently no longer available. Both in 2014 and, now, in 2019, however, she changed that claim to declare that she had not, after all, completed a three-year Bachelor of Commerce degree course from the School of Open Learning (Correspondence) University of Delhi.
Another reckless claim Irani made (video above) was to a degree from Yale University. As she admitted later, this “degree” was actually a certificate given to Members of Parliament for attending a six-day training course. This, of course, did not stop people on social media from taking jibes at her.
Not to mention that time in 2014, when she tried to clear the air and only ended up making it worse by categorically stating that she had a degree from Yale University. She later explained that she was among of a group of 11 MPs who had gone to Yale to undergo a crash course in 2013, but that did not stop social media from taking jibes at her claims.
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