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With allegations of a ‘classroom scam’ flying thick and fast, the Aam Aadmi Party’s ‘education model’ appears to be the latest target in the BJP’s heightened offensive against it.
While the CBI investigates a case it has registered against Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia over alleged corruption in the rollout of the now-scrapped liquor policy, the BJP has launched a fresh attack against Sisodia, who also holds the portfolio of education minister. The minister also finds himself at odds with Lt-Governor V K Saxena.
In the past week, Saxena first sought a report from the Chief Secretary over an alleged delay of two and a half years by the vigilance department in acting on a Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) inquiry report into the construction of additional classrooms in Delhi government schools. Separately, he wrote to the Chief Secretary asking him to examine why enrolment and attendance in these schools have been dipping over the past few years despite an increase in per student expenditure.
“Despite the substantial increase in investment in the education sector by the state government both in absolute terms, and as part of the total budget, it is seen that during the same period, the enrolment in Delhi government schools declined from 15.42 lakh in 2014-15 to 15.19 lakh 2019-20,” stated the letter written on August 26.
Most recently, he flagged a ‘delay’ in the audit of accounts of universities under the Delhi government, and sought explanations from the Vice-Chancellor of the Delhi Pharmaceutical Sciences and Research University (DPSRU) over “delaying the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) audit for five years…”
With the L-G’s office raising questions on the Delhi government’s administration of education every few days, the BJP
has also singled out the AAP government’s ‘education model’ for attack amid the political drama in the Delhi Assembly and the CBI probe against Sisodia.
The BJP leadership has also zeroed in on the 2020 CVC inquiry report and is attacking the AAP based on two findings.
The first is that the report states the Directorate of Education (DoE) had prepared a list of schools which had a ratio of more than 50 students per classroom and accordingly the Public Works Department was to build 5,825 classrooms in 194 schools. It states that after directions from the DoE, additional rooms such as labs, multipurpose hall and toilet blocks were added to the requirements as equivalent classrooms (ECRs), increasing this to 7,180 ECRs.
It states that 4,027 classrooms were constructed in 141 schools while the remainder were other kinds of rooms including 1,214 toilet blocks “which were constructed against the requirement of 160 toilet blocks”.
The second is the conclusion of the report that “cost escalation took place to the extent of Rs 326.25 crore” in these constructions.
The BJP also picked on an incident of two girls studying in a Delhi government school being injured last week after a ceiling fan in their classroom fell on them. “Toilets were counted and projected as classrooms by the Delhi government as part of the report… This is the reason why ceiling fans are failing in Delhi government schools,” BJP MP Manoj Tiwari had said in a press conference.
Aam Aadmi Party’s counter
In the meantime, the AAP has doubled down on its assertion of its work on education being its greatest asset. Sisodia hit out at the BJP saying it is “a party of illiterates (gawaar logon ki party)”. “I have heard that the BJP has dropped the matter of alcohol and turned to the matter of schools… They have realised that nothing is going to come out of that (liquor policy probe). So… they have started making up a new story, that there was a scam involved in the making of schools,” he had said.
In the past few days, the Delhi government has also made announcements on some of its new school projects. On Wednesday, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced the launch of its Delhi Model Virtual School. During the announcement, he also stated that the government would soon start its residential school for street children. A few days ago, he also inaugurated the government’s new Armed Forces Preparatory School.
Delhi BJP leader Harish Khurana told The Indian Express, “The same issue of classroom corruption had been raised by Manoj Tiwari more than two years ago when he filed a complaint on financial irregularity in this issue, and Sisodia filed a defamation case against him and other leaders. The issue is not new but the CVC report, which they had been sitting on for 2.5 years, has now come out in public… They are the ones who claim that they have the best education model in the world but what is this based on? I filed an RTI and found that 33 schools don’t teach science.”
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