Congress Treasurer Ajay Maken highlighted the shortcomings in the AAP government’s education and transport models the ruling party has been boasting of during its campaigns.
The highlights come in the third chapter of the grand old party’s ‘AAP Ke Paap’, a political campaign against the ruling party in the city to expose the shortcomings during its decade-long rule.
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Addressing a press conference on Sunday, Maken claimed that this exposure would be the final blow to the “corrupt” Kejriwal government’s misrule of over 11 years. “In the whole world, the AAP government in Delhi was the only one where the education and excise minister was the same, Manish Sisodia, who wore the mask of education to commit the crime of liquor scam.”
He alleged that the people of Delhi have now fully understood the fake models of Kejriwal and are determined to vote for the Congress on February 5, to bring back the Sheila Dikshit-led Congress Government’s model of development and progress.
He claimed during the Congress regime in 2008-09, 75,974 students had passed the 12 Board exams, and the number rose to 147,420 when Congress demited office in 2013-14, but under the AAP government in 2015-16, the students who passed came down to 116,792 and the number further slumped to 109,098 in 2019-20.
The Congress leader claimed that in 2013-14, the total number of students in government schools were 17.75 lakh whereas private schools had only 13.57 lakh, but by 2018-19, the number of students in private schools jumped to 16.61 lakh while that of government schools fell to 16.47 lakh which exposes the so called model of education and clearly indicates that either students from Government schools dropped out, or joined private schools for better quality of education.
Highlighting the issue of pollution, the Congress treasurer said the main cause of Delhi’s air pollution is the large number of vehicles on the roads due to the disturbed public transport system, and not because of stubble-burning by farmers. “Kejriwal put the blame on the farmers for his own incompetence and inability to control air pollution but according to TERI, vehicular emissions, which were 28 per cent in 2016, accounted for 47 per cent of the total estimated PM2.5 in the Capital,” he said.
Maken claimed that Delhi sees an addition of approximately 1,800 new vehicles daily. As vehicles account for the largest contribution to the toxic air, the reason for more private vehicles plying on the road was the reduction of the passenger carrying capacity of DTC.
“When Congress was in power from 2012 to 2013, DTC carried 46.77 lakh passengers per day while the number fell sharply to 24.43 lakh by August 2024 under the AAP Government. Moreover, the number of buses in the DTC fleet fell from 5609 in 2012-13 to 4541 in August 2024, and the number of DTC depots fell from 43 to 38,” he said.
