Arvind Kejriwal pitches formula To “make each Indian rich”
Arvind Kejriwal, the Chief Minister of Delhi, emphasized his claim on Friday that “education alone can make India the finest in the world” by recalling his IIT-JEE accomplishment and making a rank-by-rank comparison with a Delhi student.
“I was ranked 563 in IIT-JEE,” the Delhi Chief Minister said, “This morning I met a security guard’s son from a government school who’s got Rank 569. His father gets a salary of ₹ 12,000 a month. When this boy passes out of IIT, he will have a starting salary of ₹ 2 lakh a month. That will be the end of poverty for that family. If we do it for all our kids, each and every family in India will become rich… within a generation.”
He was speaking at an NDTV Townhall in Delhi where he’s been spending a lot of time campaigning to unseat the BJP in the assembly polls due in December.
Arvind Kejriwal pitches formula To “make each Indian rich”
Earlier, Mr. Kejriwal meet government school students who’ve cracked the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for the premier Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). “It was an emotional moment for me as I am an IIT ex-student. This country has given me a lot,” he said, “And it has been my dream since, that just like me, all of India’s children, even the poorest of the poor, get the same facilities.”
He said that 1,141 students from Delhi government schools this year passed both the NEET and IIT-JEE medical entrance exams.
The AAP’s “Make India Number 1” campaign, which was launched after the AAP won Punjab earlier this year and rekindled its larger goals, continues to focus mostly on education and health—basically service delivery and welfare programmes. The “free education and health model” in Delhi, according to the BJP, Congress, and other anti-AAP parties, is founded on “propaganda.”
Mr. Kejriwal responded to accusations of corruption by saying, “That’s just the BJP saying stuff… doesn’t mean anything.” He was referring to an alleged fraud involving the Delhi liquor policy.
He said that Manish Sisodia, his deputy in Delhi, was the sole focus of the lawsuit because of his achievements as the minister of education.
“Why don’t they arrest him? He has challenged the BJP. Or the Prime Minister should apologize to him. In this so-called corruption case, nothing has been found; nothing will be found,” he said.
The BJP yesterday showed a secretly-recorded video in which an accused in the FIR — in which Mr. Sisodia is named too — claims the Delhi government kept smaller players out of its “tailormade” excise policy to help a few persons.
Mr. Sisodia reacted with sarcasm: “BJP should give this so-called sting to the CBI, which anyway is working like an external agency of the party. In the next four days — till Monday — the CBI should arrest me if there’s any proof.”
