Kejriwal & Shah spar over schools; BJP MP Parvesh Verma draws EC ire
New Delhi: With days to go for the upcoming polls in the Capital, the political rhetoric of participating parties reached a boiling point as Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Home Minister Amit Shah got into a verbal war over the state of Delhi government schools and a day after Union Minister Anurag Thakur was seen enthusing a crowd of BJP supporters to chant, "shoot the traitors", another BJP MP, Parvesh Verma (West Delhi) laced his campaign speech with contempt and accusations against the anti-CAA/NRC protesters staging a sit-in demonstration at Shaheen Bagh.
Verma said, "They will enter your houses, rape your sisters and daughters, kill them. There's time today, Modi ji and Amit Shah won't come to save you tomorrow."
The Election Commission of India served a show-cause notice to Thakur on Tuesday after receiving a report about his comments in Rithala from the office of the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer, which has also submitted a report on the inflammatory remarks by Verma on Tuesday. Delhi Congress also approached the ECI, urging it to ban Thakur and Verma for making "provocative statements to incite communal violence".
Verma's comments came at a campaign rally in Vikaspuri. At the rally, Verma said, "If the BJP comes to power on February 11, you will not find a single protester within an hour. And within a month, we will not spare a single mosque built on government land."
Meanwhile, Delhi CM Kejriwal and Home Minister Shah sparred over the state of Delhi government schools after eight BJP Delhi MPs visited eight schools and prepared a report card purportedly showing how poorly they are run. The report card came after Kejriwal had invited opposition leaders to visit any Delhi government school to check their work over the last five years.
Shah tweeted a video by the party, where Delhi's seven Lok Sabha MPs and one Rajya Sabha MP from Delhi BJP attempt to show the "miserable" condition of Delhi government schools they visited. Shah wrote, "The miserable condition of these schools exposes your claims of revolution in education. You will have to reply to the people of Delhi."
However, the AAP hit back soon, poking holes in BJP's video as the Delhi CM and Deputy CM Manish Sisodia, who is also the Education Minister, held a press conference and called the saffron party's report card a "fraud".
Sisodia said that the school buildings shown in the video have been selectively chosen to paint a false narrative, adding that while MP Parvesh Verma showed the old building of a school, he chose not to show the new building in the school. Further, the AAP leader said that several MPs had mistakenly identified multipurpose halls as classrooms and then claimed the classrooms did not have desks.
