At a time when the Arvind Kejriwal Government is on the radar of the CBI in the alleged liquor scam case involving Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia as a prime accused, a Twitter spat broke out between Chief Minister Kejriwal and his Assam counterpart Himanta Biswa Sarma on Friday.
Sarma asked the AAP supremo to "do his homework" before commenting on the Assam Government’s decision to close schools in the State, while Kejriwal said his intention was not to "point out faults" but to "learn from each other" to make the country stronger. Sarma on Friday asserted there can be no comparison between the northeastern State and Delhi as the national Capital is more like a “municipal corporation”.
The debate was triggered by a report that the Assam Government has decided to shut down 34 schools where class 10 students failed. Reacting to the report, Kejriwal said on Twitter that shutting the schools was not a solution. "The country needs many more new schools… Instead of shutting them, improve the schools," Kejriwal tweeted.
Reacting to Delhi Chief Minister’s tweet, Sarma said Kejriwal's remarks came "without any homework". Stepping up the attack, Sarma asked Kejriwal to come to Assam and see for himself Government-run education and healthcare units, while stating that he will also visit similar facilities in Delhi during his frequent trips there. “Delhi is a State merely in name. It is more of a municipal corporation” the senior BJP leader claimed. He argued that if Assam has to be compared with other States, it has to be with places like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, or Punjab.
“I have seen their ‘mohallah clinics'. But after seeing the facilities at our Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, what is there to see in those clinics?” Sarma said.
Kejriwal replied to Himanta and said he did not want to 'fault' him. "We are all in one country. We have to learn from each other. Only then India will become the No. 1 country," Kejriwal said."I will come to Assam. Give me a date when I can come to Assam to witness the good work in education being done in the State. You also come to Delhi -- I will show you what we have done," Kejriwal tweeted.
The war of words escalated with BJP's Amit Malviya joining the debate. "No one can take offence to what Kejriwal says as he knows nothing. You don't even know how many liquor shops have been opened or how much the Delhi Government lost because of the liquor policy or how much the sellers profited or how much bribe you took," Malviya tweeted. The Chief Minister was speaking to reporters after reviewing the progress of work of a ‘Swahid Smarak and Park'.
In the education sector, Sarma maintained that Delhi has about 1,200 schools with 6,000-7,000 teachers while there are 60,000-70,000 State Government schools, employing nearly 2.5 lakh teachers in Assam. “If we had only 1,200 schools, I would have visited the institutions every day… Fish would have been served daily for breakfast, meat for lunch, and pulao for dinner,” Sarma said.