Forget Smriti Irani, there are 6 other ministers who aren't even 12th pass

Activist and long time Narendra Modi supporter Madhu Kishwar had expressed her opposition to the appointment of Smriti Irani as the nation’s human resource development minister well before the portfolios were announced and had taken to Twitter to raise a story over the appointment. It turns out Irani isn’t the only one she should have been targeting.

Kishwar since Monday has tweeted multiple times objecting to Irani being given the HRD portfolio on the ground that she wasn’t adequately qualified:

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While _Firstpost_ has pointed out that Kishwar’s tirade reeks of elitism, it turns out the activist should have gone after more ministers if she was so concerned about them being under-qualified for their jobs.

For one, this council of ministers is a relatively younger one, with a majority of the ministers under 60 years of age.

Data analysed by the Association for Democratic Reforms shows that there are six other ministers who are less qualified than Irani:

And curiously enough, it turn out out that three other women ministers have only studied up to class 12 or lower. As per their affidavits submitted to the Election Commission, it turns out that Uma Bharti, Harsimrat Kaur and Maneka Gandhi are as educated or studied less than Irani. (You can see the list of all the ministers' qualifications here .)

While water resources minister Uma Bharti studied until class 5, food processing industries minister Harsimrat Kaur studied till class 10 and women and child development minister Maneka Gandhi, like Irani, studied only till class 12.

The new aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju only studied to class 10 while his minster of state GM Siddeshwara has also studied up to the same level. Minister for heavy industries Anant Geete and minister of state for mines and steel Vishnu Deo Sai also share the same educational qualification.

However, barring exceptions like Irani, Kaur and Geete, it isn’t the first time that many of these ministers have occupied a seat of power before. Bharti and Gandhi have served as central ministers in the past as well while TDP’s Raju has served as a minister in the state of Andhra Pradesh. While educational qualifications could come to the aid of ministers, perhaps it needn’t be the only metric for assessing their merit and ability to take up a post.