Arvind Kejriwal is only the second Chief Minister with a IIT background, after his Goa counterpart Manohar Parrikar and joins a select group of ministers, including Ajit Singh and Jairam Ramesh, whose alma mater is the crown jewel of the country’s higher education.

A product of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Khargapur, 45-year-old Kejriwal studied Mechanical Engineering and passed out in 1989.

Besides Parrikar and Kejriwal, the other IIT alumni who are among the handful of highly-qualified technocrat politicians include Union Ministers Ajit Singh and Jairam Ramesh.

Parrikar passed out as a metallurgical engineer from IIT, Mumbai.

Like Kejriwal, Ajit Singh, a computer engineer by profession, is a B Tech from IIT Kharagpur, while Ramesh graduated from IIT Bombay with a B. Tech. in Mechanical Engineering.

Nandan Nilekani, also an alumnus of IIT Bombay, is also supposed to be planning an entry into the hurly-burly of politics during the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

Speculation is rife that Nilekani, currently Head of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), could be the Congress candidate from Bangalore South.

Interestingly, both Ramesh and Nilekani were both excellent quizzers and were part of the 1975 Mood Indigo team at IIT Bombay.

And the silver-haired and articulate minister with a reputation for being a blunt policy-maker could be the man whom Nilekani may turn to for tips, albeit in a different scenario, and he may well oblige.

Ramesh was the man Nilekani tapped when the Infosys IPO was undersubscribed in 1993. It is stated that Nilekani asked Ramesh, three years his senior in IIT, to put Rs 10,000 in the company. Ramesh didn’t and calls the move “the single biggest mistake of my life”.

Saurabh Bharadwaj and Manish Sisodia, Kejriwal’s ministerial colleagues, have an engineering background though not form IIT.

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