Though Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has claimed his party MLAs are “educated and very well qualified”, the affidavits filed with the Election Commission show that 23 AAP MLAs have only cleared the school exam at different levels while another three, including Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, are Diploma holders and never attended a degree college.
While defending the appointment of 21 MLAs as Chief Parliamentary Secretary, Mr Kejriwal had said, “Our MLAs are educated and very well qualified”.
“They are highly qualified people in different fields, starting from MBA to engineering and not illiterates like in other parties,” the Aam Aadmi Party leader had said on Sunday.
Four of the 26 AAP MLAs — Naresh Balyan from Uttam Nagar, Hazari Lal Chauhan from Patel Nagar, Raju Dhingan from Trilokpuri and Avtar Singh from Kalkaji — have passed middle school (Class 8) as per the affidavits they submitted to the Election Commission before contesting the Delhi assembly poll in 2015.
Party MLA Mohammad Ishraque from Seelampur is the least educated in the lot — he has just cleared the primary school level.
- Sharad Kumar from Narela, Manoj Kumar from Kondli, Girish Soni from Madipur, Sahi Ram from Tughlakabad, Mohinder Goyal from Rithala and Mahinder Yadav from Vikas Puri are matriculates (Class 10).
- Twelve party MLAs, including Shiv Charan Goel from Moti Nagar, Narayan Dutt Sharma from Badarpur, Jarnail Singh from Tilak Nagar, Pawan Kumar Sharma from Adarsh Nagar, Vishesh Ravi from Karol Bagh, Amanatullah Khan from Okhla, Shri Dutt Sharma from Ghonda, Gulab singh from Matiala, Rajesh Gupta from Wazirpur, Jagdeep Singh from Hari Nagar, Parmila Tokas from R K Puram and Dinesh Mohaniya from Sangam Vihar have cleared Class 12.
- While 16 of the AAP MLAs are graduates, seven are graduate professionals, including Kejriwal, and 20 are post graduates.
- Three AAP MLAs are diploma holders and have not mentioned themselves as graduates.
- Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and MLA from Patparganj, Manish Sisodia has mentioned Diploma in Journalism from Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan as his highest qualification.
- Rituraj Govind, MLA from Kirari, has mentioned Advance Diploma in HOTEL Management from Monarch International College of Hotel Management, Adelaide in Australia, as her top most qualification.
- Kartar Singh Tanwar from Chhatarpur has got a Diploma in Civil Engineering from G B Pant Polytechnic in Okhla.
- Jagdish Pradhan, a BJP MLA from Mustafabad, is Matric pass, Om Prakash Sharma MLA from Vishwas Nagar is a graduate, while Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly and MLA from Rohini Vijender Gupta is a post graduate.