Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia Delhi Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia

Under mounting pressure from the Congress and the BJP, Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday lashed out at the parties for “incomplete facts fixed to create a narrative” and issued a challenge on “qualitative improvement of education”.

Last week, Delhi Congress president Ajay Maken had accused the AAP government of “making revolutionary claims in education”, “spending crores of public money to bring changes in education in government schools but actually lying and misleading people”.

“The data is being presented by the BJP and the Congress in an incomplete manner. And who is presenting this data? It is the leaders who ensured that private schools opened up anywhere in the country; whether it’s the BJP or the Congress government, government schools are shutting down,” Sisodia alleged.

Sisodia began the press conference by acknowledging that the political discourse on education was constructive. “I am very glad that the parties that were only interested in the political discourse of ‘kabristan and shamshan’ are at least talking about education. They were only concerned about corruption in admission, how to make money through government schemes, benefit private institutions,” he said.

The Congress had alleged that between 2013 and 2016, the number of students in Delhi government schools had come down. Sisodia, however, claimed that this didn’t show the whole picture and compared the numbers with enrolment in MCD schools. “If you compare it with the figures of the MCD schools, there has been a constant decrease in enrolment figures across, but not in Delhi government schools… It is important to see the complete data, this is a trend when you look at MCD schools and Delhi schools.”

He said, “I issue an open challenge to the Congress and the BJP to compete with us in the field of qualitative improvement of schools. The Congress has governments in some states, the BJP has governments in quite a few, but they also have MCD schools in Delhi. In the end, the people of Delhi and its students will benefit.”

Sisodia also alleged that the information cited by the opposition parties regarding private schools was misleading since “information feeding system for private schools was very poor” and “couldn’t be compared”.

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