A video in which the education minister of Delhi, Atishi Marlena, can be seen inspecting a school and commenting on the bad state of its infrastructure is viral on social media. The post claims that the school is run by the Delhi government and that its new education minister, Atishi, maybe unknowingly exposed the truth that the schools are in poor shape claims the post. Let’s verify this claim through this article.
Claim: The education minister of Delhi, Atishi, exposes the poor state of the schools run by the Government of Delhi.
Fact: The school Atishi Marlena visited is run by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) and not the Government of Delhi. AAP won the MCD elections held in December 2022, and Shelly Oberoi became the city’s mayor. Oberoi was also present during this inspection. After visiting this school, Atishi said that the fifteen-year-old legacy of the BJP in the MCD is the reason behind the poor condition of the school. Hence the claim made in the post is Misleading.
We performed a basic keyword search on the internet to check the claim’s veracity, which led us to a YouTube video uploaded by the Aam Aadmi Party’s official channel. This video is a lengtheir version of the viral video in which the Delhi education minister, Atishi Marlena and the Mayor of Delhi, Shelly Oberoi, visit a School in Wazirabad village run by the MCD. In the video, they can be seen confronting the officials regarding the poor infrastructure and maintenance of the school.
According to a report published by the Business Standard ‘Reprimanding the school principal for her negligent attitude, Atishi said, Such a condition of the school is unacceptable and is a result of the BJP’s 15-year-old legacy in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)…..’ A few more news reports on this can be read here and here.
The municipal corporation of Delhi and the Government of Delhi has a specific set of duties to perform (here); their duties are overlapped in certain sectors. The education sector is one of those; The MCD has to take care of the primary schools, while the Government of Delhi should look after the higher and secondary schools and also colleges.
Before AAP won the Delhi civic body elections in December 2022, BJP was in power for fifteen years. In March this year, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal said their party would focus on developing the MCD-run schools. Responding to this, BJP working President Virendra Sachdeva said that the MCD-run schools were in bad shape as the Government of Delhi did not provide them funds for the past eight years (here and here).
To sum up, the school inspected by Delhi education minister Atishi Marlena is not run by the Government of Delhi but by the MCD.
