Punjab: Kejriwal woos SC community, promises their kids free education

In a bid to woo the Scheduled Caste community ahead of the Punjab assembly polls, AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday promised to provide free education to their children, besides bearing their coaching fees for higher studies, if his party comes to power.

Addressing a gathering of people belonging to the community in Hoshiarpur district, Kejriwal attacked Charanjit Singh Channi, who is Punjab’s first Dalit chief minister, accusing him of playing “politics of vote bank” and claimed that he was seeking votes from them only because he belonged to the same community.

Punjab has nearly 32 per cent Dalit population.

Kejriwal, who has in recent weeks increased his visits to the poll-bound state, asked the gathering to vote for the Aam Aadmi Party once, saying they had given many chances to rival political parties, the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal.

He asserted that his party stands shoulder to shoulder with the SC community.

The Delhi chief minister told the people that he had brought five “guarantees” for the SC community.

Giving details, he said, it will be the party’s responsibility to provide the best education free of charge to the children of the community if the AAP comes to power after the state assembly polls early next year.

“If a child belonging to the SC community wants coaching, like we did in Delhi, for engineering, medical education, railways, IAS or any exam, his or her entire fee will be borne by the Punjab government,” Kejriwal said.

If a child wishes to go abroad for pursuing graduation and post-graduation, the expenses will be borne by the state government, he said, adding that if any community member is suffering from a disease, then their medical expenses will also be borne by it.

The AAP leader said that every woman above 18 years would get Rs 1,000 per month.

Taking on the Punjab chief minister, Kejriwal said Channi hails from the Ravidassia sect and “that is why he is asking the SC community to vote for him”.

Kejriwal said that though he did not come from the community “but I come from your family”.

“If anybody from your family gets sick, I’ll get your treatment done by becoming your son. If tomorrow, your child wants to become an IAS officer, you and I will help make him an IAS officer. If your child wants a good education, then your elder brother will help you, Channi sahib will not help,” said the Delhi chief minister.

“He (Channi) is just playing politics of vote bank. He says ‘I am from the SC community and you are also from the same community, then vote for me’,” Kejriwal claimed.

The AAP leader told the people that he was a part of their family and he wanted to build the future of Punjab.

Attacking the Channi-led government over school education, he said both the chief minister and Education Minister Pargat Singh claimed that the state had the best schools in the country.

“I respect Pargat Singh a lot, he was a captain of the Indian hockey team. I respect Channi sahib but both of them said there was no need for improving the condition of schools because the schools in Punjab are number one in the country,” Kejriwal said and asked the people whether they thought the state’s educational institutions were the best in India.

“It means that they (the Congress government) do not have any intention to improve the condition of schools. They will keep them as it is,” he alleged, adding that the children of the SC community would not get good education in these schools.

He alleged that the state government’s intentions were bad and added, “It is Channi and Pargat Singh’s intention to keep the SC children backward, poor and illiterate”.

He claimed that the community was being deceived again.

Attacking the Congress government, he claimed that Channi, after becoming the chief minister, had promised to give five marla plots to the people and lakhs had applied for them but not a single plot had been given so far.

He also slammed the Punjab chief minister over the promise of regularisation of contractual employees, alleging that not even a single person out of the 36,000 contractual employees had been given a permanent job.

He hit out at the rival political parties for allegedly using the SC community and deliberately keeping them backward and poor since the Independence of the country.

Kejriwal alleged that the condition of government schools, in which the children of poor families and the SC community study, had deteriorated in 75 years and the parties deliberately kept these institutes in a bad condition so that the community could not progress.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)