In a major embarrassment to RJD president and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad, Harvard University has belied the claim that his daughter Misa Bharti delivered a lecture at the ‘India Conference’ at the university last week. Pictures (in a section of the media) showing her at the dais were “misrepresentation of facts”, the university said.
“Misa was invited as part of the audience and not as a speaker. Her attendee status can also be confirmed from the fact that she had to purchase a ticket (to attend the event),” said Rajat Sethi, a Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) graduate who was the co-chair of the conference.
Of the several photographs posted on social networking sites, one of Misa at the podium was posted on her Facebook page with the caption, ‘Harvard Vishwavidyalaya mein yuvao ki bhagidari ko lekar vyakhyan dete hue’.
Interestingly, the microphone is placed higher than Misa in this frame. In another picture, tweeted by Kiran Bedi and retweeted by Misa, Lalu’s daughter is seen sitting in the audience. Many pictures, screenshots of which have been circulated by Harvard University, were later removed from Misa’s Facebook and Twitter accounts.
The conference organizers said they do not have any official picture or video of Misa nor did any local US newspaper cover her lecture as she did not deliver one. “India Conference 2015 organizing committee noticed that Misa had uploaded some pictures on her own on social media which were objectionable due to gross misrepresentation,” Sethi said in an emailed reply, adding HKS communications department has taken cognizance and is looking into the matter.
An MBBS from Patna University, Misa contested the Lok Sabha election in May last year, albeit unsuccessfully. She allegedly went on to the stage at Harvard after the conference and got photographed. A section of Patna newspapers (not TOI) on Tuesday carried reports saying Misa was invited to deliver the lecture at Harvard. The reports ironically described her “international exposure” as a “feather in her cap” which will help her get a bigger role in Bihar politics, and were accompanied by some of the photographs which were later termed by Harvard as “misrepresentative”.
Top RJD leaders were not available for comments. One of its spokesmen Shakti Singh Yadav said the letter from Harvard invited Misa as part of audience. “She is still there. She interacted with people during a question-answer session and pictures of the same were seen posted on the social media, which we forwarded to the local print media,” he told TOI.
India Conference, organized annually by graduate students of Harvard University, is one of the largest Indian conferences in the US. Speakers at the event this year included Kiran Bedi, Sajjan Jindal, Rahul Bose, Shivshankar Menon, Prithviraj Chavan and Vishesh Bhatt.
