Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to work together to improve the country's schools and offered his government's expertise, inviting a sharp retort from the BJP.
The miserable education system in Delhi cannot be a model for the country, BJP's IT department head Amit Malviya said, adding that Modi has been working to improve government education and make it effective since he was Gujarat's chief minister.
Kejriwal's remarks come after Modi visited a school in Gandhinagar in Gujarat, and interacted with students.
"PM sir, we have done a wonderful job in the field of education in Delhi. In five years, all the government schools of Delhi were improved remarkably. Schools across the country can be improved in five years," Kejriwal said in a tweet in Hindi.
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"We have experience in this field. Please use our experience completely for this. Let's do it together for the country," he said. Kejriwal also posted a picture of Modi sitting in a classroom with the students.
"I am very happy that today all the parties and leaders of the country have to talk about education and schools. This is our biggest achievement. I hope that education is not missed only during elections. All governments together can make its schools great in just five years," the Delhi chief minister tweeted in an apparent swipe at the BJP.
Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who holds the education portfolio, said that the BJP will send Aam Aadmi Party leaders to jail while the AAP compels them to visit schools. "They will send us to jail. We will send them to schools," he said in a tweet.
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Hitting back, Malviya said Modi's aim has been to change things on the ground. "He does not do politics for merely giving advertisements like you," he said, replying to the Aam Aam Party (AAP) leader's tweet.
The BJP and the AAP have been involved in a bitter war of words in the run up to the assembly polls in Gujarat whose schedule is likely to be announced soon.
The AAP has pivoted its pitch around its welfarism, dismissed by the BJP as freebies, and what it describes as its focus on boosting education and health infra as it makes determined foray into the western state. The BJP has not lost an assembly election in Gujarat since 1995.
(With PTI Inputs)
