Delhi Law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar writes to CM Kejriwal over degree row, says charges 'baseless'

NEW DELHI: Delhi Law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar today wrote a letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over the controversy surrounding his law degree, and said the allegation of it being fake was "baseless" and intended to "malign" his image and that of the party.

Tomar also threatened to file a defamation suit against BJP leader Nand Kishor Garg, who had moved court challenging the authenticity of his degrees, for "maligning" his name.

Kejriwal had on Tuesday asked Tomar to clarify his stand on the matter after Bihar's Tilka Manjhi Bhagalpur University submitted in Delhi High Court that his provisional certificate was "fabricated and does not exist in the institution's record".

In his letter to Kejriwal, Tomar said, "As it was getting clear that he (Nand Kishore Garg) was likely to lose his seat (assembly election), he started resorting to dirty tricks to malign my name. When nothing else seemed to work, he filed an election petition in High Court raising questions with regards to the authenticity of my graduation and law degrees."

Claiming the documents furnished by Garg are "incorrect", Tomar said, "Garg runs a couple of universities in Delhi as well as Himachal Pradesh and due to his contacts with other universities, he has been able to obtain certain documents by citing incorrect particulars. These incorrect documents have been cited as evidence in the election petition."

Tomar said senior BJP leaders are trying to sully his image by resorting to falsehood. They are trying to "dent the image of our party through these baseless allegations".

The election petition was filed on the basis of a reply received by Ghaziabad resident Pradeep from Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia Avadh University, Faizabad.

In the reply, the university had indicated that Tomar's graduation degree under Roll No 31331 was fake. Replying to which Tomar wrote, "It may be interesting to note that this reply based on almost 30 years old record has been furnished by the university within a day of an application to this effect being filed by Pradeep."