40% of Delhi MLAs aren't graduates

•Of the 67 MLAs whose educational records are available, 27 don't have a bachelor's degree.

•The academic credentials of the new-look Delhi Assembly may appear low by modern standards, but these are better than the city's own educational profile. According to an NSSO report of 2004-05, only 20.8% of Delhiites are graduates.

•Sixteen of the new MLAs 23% of them have a postgraduate or higher degree. And education is one area where BJP seems to have defeated Congress hands down. Of the 23 MLAs from the party, 14 (60% of them) are graduates.

•In fact by far the most educated of the lot is Ghonda MLA Sahab Singh Chauhan, former chief whip of BJP who has two masters' degrees one each in English and Hindi as well as a BEd and an LLB to boot.

•Despite senior leaders of both parties stressing that "commitment to the people and not education'' is what it takes to become a people's representative, the conviction is often absent in the candidates' own affidavits. There have been numerous attempts to use words such as BA, BSc, BCom in cases where the final examination had not been cleared to create an illusion of having obtained the degree. Shoaib Iqbal, Lok Janshakti Party MLA from Matia Mahal, is a "BA (second year)'' from Zakir Husain College. Chandni Chowk's Congress MLA, Prahlad Singh Sawhney, wrote he had done "BA (second year)'' from Gwalior University while Delhi Cantonment's BJP MLA Karan Singh Tanwar's educational qualification columns reads "BSc (hons) second year in Maths from Delhi University.''