'Is this a political issue?': Sharad Pawar on PM's degree row

NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Sunday slammed those who are raising the issue of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's educational qualification.

"Is the degree a bigger question before the country? Does your degree (Reporters) or my degree matter? Is this a political issue? The bigger questions are inflation, unemployment, law and order and central government should be targeted on those issues," Times Now quoted the NCP chief as saying in Maharashtra's Nashik.

He then claimed that people are being divided on the basis of religion. "In Maharashtra, unseasonal rains have damaged crops. This is what we should discuss," he added.

Days ago, senior NCP leader and former Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar raised an interesting question that poured cold water on all the hot debates the Opposition has been trying hard to create, though unsuccessfully.

In his statement, Pawar wondered "if people voted Prime Minister Modi in 2014 on the basis of his degree." In a sort of extending his support to PM Modi, he said that Modi was voted to power in 2014 "on the basis of his charisma", and not his degree.

Addressing a public meeting, Ajit Pawar said, "In the year 2014, did the public vote for Prime Minister Modi on the basis of his degree? It was the charisma he had created which helped him win the elections."

It came at a time when the AAP has raised questions on the genuineness of PM Modi's educational degrees and claimed that they would turn out to be "fake" if a probe is conducted. Pawar has, however, said that it is not right to question the degrees of ministers and that people should focus on what a leader has achieved in their tenure, according to a report in ANI.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had earlier said that Prime Minister Modi should put his college degrees in the public domain. AAP had raised the issue in 2016 also and then BJP chief Amit Shah and the then finance minister Arun Jaitley had displayed Modi's degrees during a press conference to debunk its allegations and demanded an apology from Kejriwal for trying to defame PM Modi.

Earlier, Gujarat High Court quashed a seven-year-old order of the Central Information Commission (CIC) that had asked the Delhi University and Gujarat University to provide information on the PM's degree to Kejriwal. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 25,000 on the AAP chief for filing such a frivolous petition.