PM caught in birth-date row

Basant Rawat, TT, Ahmedabad, May 2: A controversy has broken out over the authenticity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's official date of birth, with the Congress digging up a half-century-old college register to allege a discrepancy.

According to the Lok Sabha and Gujarat Assembly websites and Modi's election affidavits, he was born on September 17, 1950.

But the Congress says that records at M.N. College of Science in Visnagar, north Gujarat, show a "Narendrakumar Damodardas Modi" as a pre-science (equivalent to Class XII) student and cite his date of birth as August 29, 1949.

"Which one is genuine and which one is fake, we would like to know," Congress spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil said yesterday, showing reporters a copy of the college register.

Gohil said the Election Commission should take cognisance of the alleged discrepancy suo motu (on its own) and find out whether Modi had furnished incorrect information in his poll affidavits.

Vice-chancellor M.N. Patel of Gujarat University, from where Modi had earned a master's in political science in 1983, said his institution had no records of Modi's date of birth. M.N. College of Science is affiliated to the Hemchandracharya North Gujarat University.

"We don't keep such records. We only have mark sheets since 1949, when this university was established," Patel told this newspaper today.

Modi's elder brother Somabhai Modi insisted that the Prime Minister was born on September 17, 1950. He said this was the date mentioned in Modi's horoscope, which would have been drawn up shortly after his birth and long before he was admitted to school.

He said that Modi had indeed been admitted to M.N. College around the age of 17.

"Parents in those days would usually not remember the exact date of their children's birth when the time came to admit them to school, and the teacher would write down a random date," Somabhai said.

Wide illiteracy, and a casualness relating to details such as dates of birth, meant that few parents consulted the horoscope.

A wrong date mentioned in the school records would have been perpetuated during college admission till Modi him self later corrected it, Somabhai suggested.

"It's not a serious issue. Narendra Modi cannot be blamed for mistakes by his parents," Somabhai added. "He merely corrected the mistake."

BJP state president Vijay Rupani echoed him: "The Congress has nothing else to do; so they are raking up such issues."

However, a lawyer who didn't want to be quoted said that if the poll panel receives a complaint and decides that a college register is more reliable than a horoscope, it can have implications for Modi.

Degree debate

The controversy follows one relating to an alleged lack of clarity around some details of the Prime Minister's educational qualifications.

Modi's 2014 election affidavit mentioned a bachelor's degree in political science from Delhi University in 1978 through distance education, and an MA from Gujarat University.

After an RTI activist and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal demanded clarity recently, the Central Information Commission directed the two universities to provide details.

Patel, the Gujarat University vice-chancellor, said yesterday that Modi had earned an MA from his institution in 1983, scoring 62.3 per cent as an external student. Delhi University has not yet provided the information sought.

Patel said his university had no records of Modi's BA degree. "Migration certificates are not preserved," he told this newspaper.