Delhi LG Orders Investigation into Alleged School Scam of Aam Aadmi Party

It is alleged that there are gross financial irregularities in the construction of classrooms carried out by the AAP politicians and huge corruption has happened in the construction projects.

By Rakesh Raman

While the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is already embroiled in multiple cases of crime and corruption, Delhi Lt. Governor (LG) Vinai Kumar Saxena has ordered a probe into Delhi’s classrooms construction projects.

Saxena has sought a report from the Delhi Chief Secretary over the delay of more than 2 years in the Vigilance Department action advised by India’s top anti-corruption organization Central Vigilance Commission (CVC).

Delhi chief minister (CM) Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia often claim classroom construction as a major work that they have done in Delhi schools. Although the education levels in Delhi schools have gone from bad to worse, Kejriwal, Sisodia, and other AAP politicians show school construction work to praise their own performance.

It is alleged that there are gross financial irregularities in the construction of classrooms carried out by the AAP politicians and huge corruption has happened in the construction projects.

According to a Times Now report of August 26, Kejriwal’s AAP government is facing allegations of enhancing construction cost to the extent of Rs. 500 crore without issuing tender, constructing a lesser number of classrooms than claimed by AAP, among various other violations of financial statutes. 

After the recent arrest of AAP minister Satyendra Jain in a massive money laundering case, the party said that soon Sisodia – who heads the education ministry – may be arrested. 

The AAP tweeted the proof of a complaint which alleges that Delhi Education Minister Sisodia, then PWD minister Jain, and others are involved in a huge scam of Rs 2,000 crore for the construction of classrooms in Delhi.

While no proper education is happening in Delhi Government schools, Kejriwal, Sisodia, and others in their AAP clique are only constructing schools because there is a huge corruption opportunity in construction projects.

[ Also Read: Let Us Save the School Education of Delhi ]

These days, to pat on their own back, the AAP politicians are flaunting a New York Times (NYT) school education article which looks like an advertorial (advertisement or paid article) arranged by AAP’s publicity department.

It is alleged that the NYT staffer Karan Deep Singh – who wrote the dubious article to praise Sisodia and AAP – has conflict of interest, as he enjoys benefits offered by Kejriwal’s AAP government. 

An attempt to take Karan Deep Singh’s response on the said article failed, as he did not reply to my email.  [ You can click here to read my email sent to Karan Deep Singh / NYT on August 19, 2022. ]

Since the AAP politicians do not have any parameters to evaluate the impact of education and learning outcomes, they hoodwink the people and pliant journalists by telling flagrant lies about school education quality.

[ Also Read: Campaign to Save School Students of India from Directionless Education ]

Let alone Delhi Government school students, even the teachers in these schools are clueless about education standards, pedagogy, and relevance of school education. If you ask, say, 100 teachers to appear in an exam on the subject they teach, 99 would fail.

Since the foundational school education is bad, the college and university education for students becomes meaningless. As a result, students with higher education degrees are not able to get jobs and unemployment is spreading like a pandemic disease. 

Students who study at Delhi Government schools and possess graduation or post-graduation degrees are not even employable. Then how can Kejriwal and AAP claim that school education is good? 

Picture this: Kejriwal and his accomplices in AAP have been repeatedly claiming that their government has provided 10 lakh (1 million) jobs in the private sector to people of Delhi through its Rozgar Bazaar portal. 

But it is estimated that only about 12,500 people got some irrelevant jobs through the portal in about 2 years since its launch in July 2020. According to a July 2 report in The Hindu newspaper, Kejriwal’s Delhi Government doesn’t have names or any other details of people who actually got jobs.

[ Fault Lines: A Research Report on the Quality of Education in Delhi Schools ]

Since Kejriwal and others in his party have been telling lies, their claims of jobs have been inconsistent during the past many months. Kejriwal and other AAP members deliberately hide these crucial facts because they are dishonest. 

They leverage school education to deceive the voters for gaining undue political advantage and making easy money as alleged in the classroom  construction-cum-corruption scandal.

While the Delhi LG has ordered an investigation into the classroom construction work, there should also be a transparent audit of school education in Delhi so that Kejriwal and his party should not tell lies about the quality of education.

The independent audit should cover parameters such as teacher-student ratio, need for classrooms, syllabuses, teachers’ competence, resources in school, learning outcomes, employability of students, Return on Investment (RoI) analysis, and empirical evaluation of education impact on students.

After publicly releasing the findings of such an audit, hopefully Kejriwal, Sisodia, and others in AAP will stop telling lies about school education.

By Rakesh Raman, who is a national award-winning journalist and social activist. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society. 

He has also launched the “Power Play: Lok Sabha Election 2024 in India” editorial section to cover the news, events, and other developments related to the 2024 election.