Smriti Irani Puts an End to Degree Row

A fresh controversy has broken out over Union Minister and senior BJP leader Smriti Irani's educational qualifications a day after she filed her nomination for the Lok Sabha elections. In the affidavit, Irani said that she has submitted to the Election Commission that she did not complete her graduation from Delhi University. Opposition party Congress said that in previous elections, Smriti had filed affidavits saying that she passed secondary school examination in 1991 and senior secondary school examination in 1993.

She has said she did not complete her Bachelor of Commerce (Part-I) a three-year degree course from Delhi University's School of Open Learning in 1994.

In her affidavit for 2014 polls, she had reportedly said she graduated from the university in 1994, triggering a row over the veracity of her claim, with opposition parties alleging she was not a graduate.

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.