Kejriwal, Sisodia visit CBSE Class 12 toppers, say AAP govt ‘investing’ in children for ‘country’s future’

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia visited the city’s CBSE Class 12 examination toppers. Kejriwal said the AAP government was ‘investing’ in children for the ‘country’s future’ and his government had doubled the budget for the education sector in its first year.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia visited the city’s CBSE Class 12 examination toppers on Tuesday.

Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal said the AAP government had doubled the budget for the education sector in its first year and added that it was an ‘investment, not an expenditure’. (HT/Burhaan Kinu)

The chief minister later told reporters that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government was “investing” in children for the “country’s future”.

His government had doubled the budget for the education sector in its first year, the AAP supremo said, adding that it was an “investment, not an expenditure”.

Kejriwal and Sisodia, who is also the education minister of Delhi, paid a visit to the CBSE Class 12 toppers — Bharti Raghav, Prince Kumar, the son of a DTC bus driver, Prachi Prakash and Chitra Kaushik — at their residences.

They also visited an orphanage in Daryaganj to meet Shahnaz, who has topped the exam in the vocational stream.

“In the last few years, there has been a makeover of government schools... the same education is being imparted in private and government schools now... we had increased the education budget from Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore after our government was formed,” Kejriwal told reporters.

In the CBSE Class 12 examination, Delhi’s pass percentage was 89. Girls, with a pass percentage of 93.19, outperformed the boys (84.93) in Delhi region. Last year, the city’s pass percentage was 88.37.

According to a government official, Prince Kumar topped the science stream with a 97% score, while Chitra Kaushik, with 95.6% marks, was the topper in the humanities stream. Bharti Raghav and Prachi Prakash jointly topped the commerce stream.

The pass percentage of government-aided schools in Delhi is 82.79 this year as against 80.32 in 2017. The pass percentage of private schools is 88.35 this year as compared to last year’s 84.20.