New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday, February 20, remarked that the educational qualifications of candidates are irrelevant for voters in the country and the only exception could be the state of Kerala.
“No one votes on the basis of educational qualifications in our country anyways,” Justice K.M. Joseph said, during a hearing. “Except maybe in Kerala,” Justice Nagarathna weighed in, according to Bar and Bench.
The two-judge bench of Justice Joseph and Justice Nagarathna was hearing a petition against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Harsh Vardhan Bajpayee. The petitioner, Congress leader Anugrah Narayan Singh, appealed to the court to declare Bajpayee’s election to the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly in 2017 null and void. Singh had earlier moved the Allahabad high court too, which had rejected his plea on the grounds that the petition was “infructuous”, as the term for which Bajpayee was elected had already ended in 2022.
The contention of the petitioner was Bajpayee did not disclose his correct educational qualifications and liabilities in the affidavits filed along with his nomination papers for the 2007, 2012, and 2017 Uttar Pradesh Assembly Elections.
Singh alleged that Bajpayee had claimed to have received a Bachelor’s in Technology (B.Tech) degree from a non-existent university called ‘Seferred’ in England in 2017, whereas in 2007 and 2012, he had shown that he had a BTech degree from the University of Sheffield, England.
Singh also pointed out that Bajpayee had claimed to have graduated with a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from Delhi University in 2006, which the former said was impossible, for Bajpayee had allegedly cleared the BTech examination the same year.