A political slugfest erupted on Monday over the visit of AAP minister Manish Sisodia to state-run schools in Gujarat and the subsequent visits of BJP leaders to Delhi government-run schools, with both sides trying to 'expose' the fault lines in the facilities provided by the educational institutes.
Mr Sisodia, who is also the Delhi education minister, on Monday visited two state-run schools in Gujarat's Bhavnagar, the hometown of state education minister Jitu Vaghani, and claimed that they are in bad shape with their walls covered in cobwebs and toilets stinking while 'guest teachers' are managing them on a salary that is renewed monthly.
Hitting back at the AAP leader, West Delhi BJP MP Parvesh Sahib Singh Verma claimed the condition of Delhi government-run schools was deplorable.
The BJP leader also invited the education and health ministers of his party-ruled Gujarat government to visit the Delhi government-run schools and mohalla clinics.
He tweeted videos of the Delhi government schools visited by him in his constituency, and said that he was informed by the staff that children were forced to study in a building that was declared "dangerous".
Mr Verma slammed Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Mr Sisodia over cracked walls and roofs of school buildings besides the non-availability of drinking water to students in the video. "Reality of one more school run by Delhi government (Hastsal school). 'Delhi model' exists only in advertisements. On ground, this is the reality," he said sharing the video on Twitter.
South Delhi BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri also visited five Delhi government schools in his constituency, saying what he saw on the ground exposed Mr Kejriwal's claim of giving "world class schools" to Delhi.
Sharing video of his visit to the schools on social media, he said the condition of most schools was like "70 rooms, 6,000 students, inadequate number of teachers and lack of clean water".
Meanwhile, Mr Sisodia, in a series of tweets, said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was "rattled" by his exposure of how schools were ruined in 25 years of the party rule in Gujarat.
"Sadly, all the Delhi BJP leaders could not find one government school in Delhi with cobweb, lack of desk for children or other facilities for teaching," he said on Twitter.
He further said the Delhi BJP leaders were showing pictures of such rooms where tiles were broken or whitewash was lacking and repair and painting work was on, and added that he felt proud that they could not find anything much despite all their effort.
Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, Leader of Opposition in Delhi, claimed that the Kejriwal government could not construct a building for a school in Mustafabad which is being run in a tent where 6,000 students study in four shifts.
A debate has been raging between the AAP and BJP over the status of government schools in Delhi and poll-bound Gujarat.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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