Smriti Irani back in Twitterverse, defends HRD stint

NEW DELHI: Textiles minister Smriti Irani returned to Twitter on Wednesday to defend her performance at the education ministry that she had led for two years.

Irani, who was shifted out of human resource development in Tuesday’s reshuffle of the Narendra Modi ministry, said all her initiatives were towards improving the quality of education in the country.

“In last 2 years all initiatives of @HRDMinistry have been towards increasing learning outcomes for students & improving quality of education,” she tweeted.

The assertion came soon after her successor Prakash Javadekar said raising the quality of education would be his biggest challenge.

Like most other ministers on tenterhooks as Prime Minister Modi decided on big changes in his team, the former education minister had maintained Twittersilence except for some retweets on the government’s achievements.

Her detractors on social media had gone on and on, though.

This time, Irani did not respond to them. Instead, the minister who often got into public spats with her critics on and off social media put her achievements on record.

She thanked education ministry officials for their support “in realising PM @narendramodi’s vision of ensuring quality education for all”.

And then, in some more tweets, she spoke about the impending rollout of the new education policy and the Swayam project that will let students choose from 500 online courses.

She did emphasise Javadekar’s statement that he would build upon the initiatives undertaken by the ministry in the past two years.

Javadekar signalled he would go a step further. And that his approach would be a lot more conciliatory than it had been in the past. Son of a primary schoolteacher, Javadekar called himself a product of the student movement that had often been at war with his predecessor.