BJP leader and Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy on Saturday stepped up his verbal attack on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal by questioning his admission to IIT-Kharagpur. Alleging that Kejriwal did not get admission to IIT on merit, Swamy waved copies of replies from IIT-Kharagpur on the issue sought under Right to Information Act.
Earlier, Swamy and Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra took on each other on the social media over the former’s remarks about ‘waiters’.
“All his life he (Kejriwal) has done fraud. He says he was a meritorious student in IIT but I have records of how he got his admission,” Swamy alleged. Suggesting Kejriwal had not taken the IIT-JEE entrance exam, Swamy said that the Delhi CM may have possibly used his father’s connections to get enrolled in the institute. “last row of RTI column shows that Kejriwal has no rank (IIT). He probably came through other methods,” Swamy said.
The BJP leader had sought details of the process by which Kejriwal got admission to IIT-Kharagpur in the 1980s and was awarded a BTech (Hons) degree. In a Press release, he cited the RTI reply from the institute which was asked to provide basis of Kejriwal’s entry into B-Tech programme and his All India Rank (AIR) in any competitive exam such as the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE). IIT-Kharagpur replied it does not have the information available.
However, the RTI gave other details of Kejriwal — including his Roll No in the Mechanical Engineering course and the years of study and did not provide the copy of grade sheet of subjects since it is exempted from disclosure under the RTI Act.
Meanwhile, Swamy engaged in a verbal dual with Vadra after the latter criticised the BJP leader over his remarks about waiters. Taking a dig at Swamy over his apparent swipe at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in which he had said Ministers who wear a coat and tie look like waiters and must be instructed to wear Indian clothes, Vadra wrote on his Facebook page that using such a terminology was derogatory and classist. “Undermining waiters who work hard for a living; making condescending and derogatory remarks about them is deplorable and classist,” Vadra wrote.
However, Swamy retaliated by saying: “Mr Vadra should concentrate on staying out of jail instead of making political comments.” He then went on to add: “Vadra’s mother was a waitress in a small restaurant in England. Perhaps this is why he felt bad when I spoke about waiters…I only said that Ministers shouldn’t look like waiters. It wasn’t against anyone.”
He sought to downplay his threat of “bloodbath” making it clear he did not intend the literal meaning of the word but only hinted at “chaos” which has not happened.
