‘Delhi more like municipal corporation, no comparison with Assam’
GUWAHATI, Aug 26: Chief minister Himanta Biswa 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”.
He asked his Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal to come to Assam and see for himself the government-run education and healthcare units, while stating that he will also visit similar facilities in Delhi during his frequent trips there.
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Sarma was reacting to claims by Kejriwal and other Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders that Delhi has better education and healthcare facilities than Assam.
“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 done 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.
The chief minister was speaking to reporters after reviewing the progress of work of a ‘Swahid Smarak and Udyan’ here.
In the education sector, he 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.
On Kejriwal asking him to visit Delhi to see the healthcare and education facilities, Sarma said, “I frequently visit Delhi, he doesn’t have to tweet to ask me to go there. Since he so desires, I will visit the clinics and schools there during one of my visits. He can also come here and see our facilities.”
The two CMs had entered into a tussle on the micro-blogging site on Thursday with Kejriwal criticising the Assam government for closing down schools when there was a need to open more schools across the country.
Sarma had countered it by claiming that the government had provincialised or taken over private schools into the government fold since 2013 as well as established new ones.
On Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s (ABVP) criticism of the state government’s decision to teach Maths and Science in the English language from Class 3 onwards, Sarma said the organisation has a democratic right to protest against any government decision as long as the Opposition is not violent.
ABVP is the students’ wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
“We (BJP) have some similarities with the ABVP, like our unflinching love for Bharat Mata, but we have differences too,” Sarma added. (PTI)
