Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia met national capital’s CBSE Class 12 examination toppers on Tuesday.

While talking to media, Kejriwal said the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government was “investing” in the children for the “country’s future”.

His government had doubled the budget for the education sector in its first year, the AAP supremo said, adding that it was an “investment, not an expenditure”.

Kejriwal, along with education minister Sisodia visited the residnces of CBSE Class 12 toppers — Bharti Raghav; Prince Kumar (son of a DTC bus driver); Prachi Prakash and Chitra Kaushik — to congratulate them personally.

They also visited an orphanage in Daryaganj to meet Shahnaz, who has topped the exam in the vocational stream.

“In the last few years, there has been a makeover of the government schools…the same education is being imparted in private and government schools now…we had increased the education budget from Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore after our government was formed. It is like an investment, not an expenditure. We are investing in our children. We are investing for the country’s future and we are getting to see the results,” said Kejriwal.

He further added that the AAP government was committed to supporting students.

In the CBSE Class 12 examination, Delhi’s pass percentage was 89. Girls with a pass percentage of 93.19 outperformed boys (84.93) in the Delhi region.
Last year, the city’s pass percentage was 88.37.

According to a government official, Prince Kumar topped the science stream with a 97-per cent marks, while Kaushik with 95.6 per cent marks was the topper in the humanities stream. Raghav and Prakash jointly topped the commerce stream.

The pass percentage of the government-aided schools in Delhi was 82.79 this year as against the 80.32 in 2017.

The pass percentage of the private schools was 88.35 this year as compared to last year’s 84.20.

The national topper of the CBSE Class 12 was Meghna Srivastava from Ghaziabad who had scored 99.8 per cent marks. A student of humanities, she had scorec 499 out of 500 in the examination. The only subject she didn’t score a 100 out of 100 was English.

Anuoushka Chandra from SAJ School, Sec 14C, Vasundhara, Ghaziabad, came second with 498 marks. She got 98 in English and 100 in rest subjects. Seven students are tied at the third spot with 497 marks each. Of these seven, one is from Jaipur, 1 from Ludhiana, 1 from Haridwar, 1 from Noida, 1 from Meerut and 2 from Ghaziabad.

As per the Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE), a total of 16,38,428 and 11,86,306 students had registered for examination this year for Class 10 and Class 12, respectively. The exams were held at 4,138 centres across India and 71 centres outside the country.

(With agency inputs)