Govt policies on education a failure: Cong
NEWDELHI: The Delhi Congress on Thursday questioned the Arvind Kejriwal government’s claims on its achievements in the education sector and accused it of failing to spent the education budget in the past two years, because of which almost ₹2,000 crore lapsed.
Released a report – ‘Reality of Delhi government education: An expose’ – Delhi Congress chief Ajay Maken said students were leaving government schools and fewer students were clearing the Class 12 Board exams.
“AAP always claims a record increase in budget allocation in the education but they never tell us the amount of the unutilised budget. ₹1,982 crore got lapsed in the last two years in the education sector. 13.55% and 11.5% of budgetary allocation on education went unspent in the last two financial years,” Maken said.
Maken said the data was compiled from detailed statements of the grants-annual budget, CBSE site-press releases/statistics on results, the annual handbook of statistics of the Delhi government, and the government’s results analysis by the education department. In 2015-16, the government had allocated ₹9,836 to the education sector and in 2016-17, ₹10,690 was allocated.
Maken said that during the last year of the Congress regime in Delhi, 2013-14, the total number of students in government schools who passed Class 12 was 1.47 lakh. “This number declined to 1.24 lakh in 2015, and in 2016 it went to 1.17 lakh and further to 1.09 lakh in 2017 under the AAP govt,” he said. Reacting to the allegations, Atishi Marlena, advisor to the education minister Manish Sisodia, said the government was still in the process of recovering the education system from the damage done during the previous rule. “Those who destroyed Delhi’s government school sys- tem, left buildings in a dilapidated state and were hand-inglove with private schools should themselves be answering these questions. We are still in the process of making government schools recover from the damage done by 15 years of Congress rule,” she said.
The Congress leader said that the number of students passing Class 12 from private schools increased. He said the number of students appearing and passing Class 12 exams from the government schools fell to 42,296 and 38,489, respectively, in the last three years. Maken said while the government claimed to have constructed 5,000 new classrooms, this does not correspond with the number of students enrolling in the schools.