Uttar Pradesh’s Minister of State for Jail and Public Service Management Jai Kumar Singh Jaiki has told college students that ministers need not be educated in order to govern, ANI reported on Wednesday.

“[A] minister doesn’t need to be educated,” he told a gathering at Seth Ram Gulam Patel Memorial Intern College in Sitapur district on Tuesday. “I am a minister and I have a personal secretary and staff working under me. I don’t have to run the jail. The jail officials who are sitting [to do the work] and the jailor have to run it.”

Jaiki said educated people were often “bad for society”. “Often the IAS [Indian Administrative Service] and IPS [Indian Police Service] officers are heard saying that the politicians are uneducated...in fact, the educated people are bad for the society,” he said, according to Deccan Herald.

Jaiki said he had to only ensure jails were well stocked with “food and provisions”. A leader should be a “visionary”, and that has nothing to do with their educational degrees, he added.

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