DU fake degree row: ABVP’s Ankiv Baisoya says he studied ‘several types of subjects’ in Vellore
New Delhi : The newly-elected Delhi University Students’ Union president Ankiv Baisoya said that he had studied “several types of subjects” at Thiruvalluvar University in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore from 2013 to 2016. However, he had trouble recalling the specific subjects included in his Bachelor of Arts programme and also the names of any heads of department.
A member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliate, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, 23-year-old Baisoya had obtained admission in Delhi University’s postgraduate Buddhist Studies programme this year by submitting marksheets that are ostensibly from Thiruvalluvar University, a state university. He says that he graduated from there in 2016.
But the Tamil Nadu branch of the Congress Party and its students’ group, the National Students Union of India, had the documents he submitted vetted by the university. Its controller of examinations declared the document a “fake certificate”. On Tuesday, the National Students Union of India circulated images of that letter, the envelope in which it had arrived and a photocopied marksheet.
Baisoya, however, described the documents the rival union was circulating as “a fraud”. He said: “Their attempt to create a controversy over the [electronic voting machines] used in the polls did not work, that is why they are questioning my degree. Whatever these documents are, they can be verified and I will fully cooperate with the process.” NDTV has reported Thiruvalluvar University officials insisted that no one named had Ankiv Baisoya studied there.
“It is incumbent on DU administration to investigate and expel Ankiv Baisoya if certificate [is] fake,” said Ruchi Gupta, a Congress member in charge of the National Students’ Union of India. “Needless to say, he will also no longer remain [Delhi University Students’ Union] president.” Rival students leaders, especially those from the Left, gleefully noted that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s postgraduate degree in political science from Delhi University also has a question mark dangling over it.
But as in Modi’s case, Delhi University has not addressed the Baisoya issue. “I have had so many calls from the media since morning but none from the university,” the Parishad leader said. “No one from the university has called and said, ‘Your degree is a fake.’”
KTS Sarao, the head of Buddhist Studies, a department singularly rich in student leaders, told The Indian Express: “When there is a complaint raised, that is the time degrees are verified. There is a department in the university which does this. For now, we have not received any complaint.” But on Wednesday morning, the National Students’ Union of India announced it would file a police complaint against Baisoya for alleged forgery and another with the university.
Life in Vellore
There is practically no trace of Baisoya’s life in Vellore on his Facebook page although it is rich in photographs from campaigns and protests in Delhi University over much the same period – he is either in them or has been tagged on them.
For example, he has been tagged on a photograph posted on Facebook on October 17, 2014, which is clearly of a protest at Delhi University’s Faculty of Arts. The Parishad’s present state secretary, Bharat Khatana posted the photo of another protest on November 12, 2014, and tagged Baisoya on it. Khatana and a noticeably slimmer Baisoya, appear in a third photo, posted six days later, both wearing the Parishad’s name-tags. Photographs from the next two years are more numerous, especially from 2016 when he clearly helped campaign for the Parishad’s candidate for president, Satender Awana, who had also won.
Asked to explain why he appears in campaign material and protest photographs in Delhi but there is none of his life in Vellore, he said: “Mera up-down hota rehta tha” – I kept travelling back and forth between Vellore and Delhi. “In the middle I would go for examinations, some classes or if I had some work but most of the time I was in Delhi only,” he added. He also insisted that he had attended a “regular programme” and not a distance-learning or correspondence one that could have explained his ubiquity in Delhi’s student politics in that period.
About his student life, he appeared to remember nothing. Asked which subjects he studied as part of his arts programme, Baisoya could not name a single one except English: “I wrote several types of exams, in English and skilled-based subject.” Upon being prodded on whether he did history or any other discipline, he said he studied “several types of subjects – skill-based subjects, core, allied”. He could not recall the name of the head of any department.
This vagueness is reflected in at least one marksheet shared by the National Students’ Union of India. It apparently represents his performance in the third semester and in place of subjects, it gives the type of course it was – “core theory”, “allied III” and “skill based subject”. The semester stretched from May 2014 till June 2015, even though it seems improbable that the semester lasted a whole year. In addition, the marksheet was issued before the semester was finished, on December 22, 2014. The document bears the names of Baisoya’s parents. The web address stated is “thiruvalluvaruniversity.ac.in” in place of the actual www.tvu.edu.in. As some reports have noted, there are errors in the Tamil version of the name printed on the certificate.
Delhi college
At the same time, there are hints on Baisoya’s Facebook page of his association with a Delhi college. In September 2014, he was tagged on campaign material but for a candidate contesting in a college election – commerce student Sumit Yadav was contesting the post of president in the students union of the College of Vocational Studies, affiliated to Delhi University. An Ankiv Baisoya appears in tutorial records of the college’s economics department in 2015 and 2016. Then, as recently as on September 10, popular student journal DU Beat profiled each candidate from the Parishad’s panel and described Baisoya as an economics graduate from the College of Vocational Studies.
But the Parishad has defended him, choosing to place the onus of fixing this on Delhi University. “Delhi University gave admission to Ankiv Baisoya after due verification of its documents,” said the institution’s media convenor. “Even today DU has all the right to verify documents of any student enrolled in university. But it is not the job of NSUI to provide certificates to any person.”
courtesy : scroll.in
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
