Chandigarh, June 7 – Former union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal today condemned the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government for failing government school children yet again by leaving 2.43 lakh students out of the ambit of the mid day meal scheme.
In a statement here, Mrs Harsimrat Badal said “it is shocking that a government which purports to represent the ‘aam aadmi’ is keeping the latter’s children hungry by denying them nutritious food”. Asking the chief minister to look into the matter and resolve it immediately, Mrs Badal said “it is your duty to ensure our children receive nutritious food in school. Not doing so calls for fixing responsibility for the same and sacking the Education minister immediately”.
Mrs Badal said large scale shortcomings had been pointed out in the running of the mid day meal scheme. She said it had also come to light that students were also not receiving supplementary nutrition under the flexi fund component and that the State had also failed to propose millets for the scheme. “Food sampling is also not done from approved laboratories”, she said adding this indicated the total apathy of the AAP government towards the nutritious need of government school students.
The Bathinda MP said school education was in shambles ever since the AAP government took over the reins of the State. “The chief minister has been consistently harping on the Delhi Model of school education but has limited this to publicity stunts and advertisements alone. The truth is that nearly half of all schools in the State do not have a Principal even though the AAP government had announced after the formation of the government that not a single school would be allowed to function without a head. By the end of the year another 147 posts of Principals will fall vacant”. She said besides these, out of 1,750 posts of headmaster as many as 700 posts were lying vacant. Asserting that the state of primary school education was worse, Mr Badal said as many as 14,000 posts of teachers were lying vacant.
Asking the chief minister to tackle the mess in school education instead of renaming Meritorious Schools established by former chief minister Parkash Singh Badal as Schools of Eminence and spending crores to publicize this “feat”, Mrs Badal said “if we are to build a resurgent Punjab, our first target should be strengthening primary school education. Get on this job immediately”, she advised the chief minister.