The three main parties in Delhi have announced their candidates for Lok Sabha Elections 2019. In 2014, the BJP has swept all the seven seats in the capital and is now hoping to achieve the same feat in 2019 as well. One of the most interesting fights of this election in Delhi will be happening on East Delhi constituency. While BJP has fielded former cricketer Gautam Gambhir on the seat, AAP has gone with Atishi Marlena. For the Congress, Arvinder Singh Lovely will be competing against these two.
Gautam Gambhir has recently joined the BJP. Known for his brash, attacking batsman during his cricketing career who helped India win two world cups (including one T-20), Gautam Gambhir is a popular face. Additionally, he has been very vocal on issues of importance on twitter and has participated in various social causes. In terms of popularity, Gautam Gambhir certainly leaves his two competitors far behind. Coupled with the Modi-wave in the capital and the country, Gautam Gambhir is turning out to be the favorite to win the election from East Delhi constituency.
On the other hand, AAP has fielded Atishi. Atishi aka Atishi Marlena was recently made to drop her surname by the AAP. In terms of media hype, Atishi is the one with the lead.
AAP has been proudly proclaiming itself to be a champion for women’s empowerment by fielding Atishi Marlena from the East Delhi constituency. There is much hype about the candidature as she was known as one of the “key reformists” in the party, but that could not be far from the truth. Out of the 7 Delhi Lok Sabha seats, only one has been given to a woman and that to a woman such as Marlena, whose previous record in the capital has been quite sketchy. On the basis on this one candidature, AAP seeks to show themselves as a “women centric party”.
Atishi Marlena had been previously working closely with deputy CM Manish Sisodia on revamping education under the Delhi government. AAP has portrayed an image of her changing the education system for the better and had accredited her with high acclamations. However, the stark reality is something different altogether, be it with regards to teachers, principals or the students. Taking a look at the teachers, the sheer incompetency of the government teachers is shocking as there is a dearth of qualified teachers in Delhi government schools. The guest teachers so appointed are not competent enough and this fact became quite evident when the Delhi Subordinate Services Selection Board (DSSSB) told the honourable Delhi High Court on March 5 this year that out of 21,135 guest teachers, who wanted to be regularised, 16,383 of them could not even achieve the minimum passing marks in the examination conducted to fill a large number of vacancies in the government schools. Needless to say, the AAP government is still hell-bent on regularising the guest teachers and even passed a bill in the assembly. Earlier, the Delhi High Court had pulled up the government saying, “If guest teachers were at all competent, they would pass the exam conducted for regular teachers.”
Now obviously, incompetent teachers are directly proportional to student failures. An RTI reply stated that the number of government school students who failed in the academic session 2015-16 were 15112 in class 10 and 14562 in class 12. In 2016-17, 11,738 failed class 10 and 14274 flunked class 12. Session 2017-18 was the worst with 42503 failures in class 10 and 10,566 failures in class 12. We even witnessed a drastic measure by the government last year when they barred the students, who had failed the board, from taking re-admission. The school authorities followed the Delhi school education rules and instead forced the students to take transfer certificates and asked them to opt for National Institute of Open school learning. The High Court seemed pained by such an autocratic ruling and lashed out at the authorities saying, “How could you throw the students out? Where will they go?” Despite the high court order, a large number of students failed to get admission and now they are out of the school system. This is because they want to push these students out of the school so that they can show better results,” stated lawyer Ashok Agarwal of Justice for All. Out of a total of 1,55,436 students who were not able pass the exam between the classes IX-XII, only 52,582 were readmitted. It is pertinent to note here that according to the Delhi school education rule, the re-admission of failed student cannot be denied if the student reaches out to the school administration.
Delhi has 1,024 government schools out of which 595 do not have principals and 106 schools do not even have a post for the principal.
For a party that lauds itself on the educational reforms, the statistics display an unfortunate result. Arvind Kejriwal has patted his own back time and again claiming that education and healthcare is the main focus of the AAP government but these figures busted all his claims. Thereafter, due to these failures attributed to her, Marlena was removed from the post by the centre.
Just like her educational reforms, Aitishi Marlena’s other initiative has been a failure too. She supposedly headed the much publicized ‘Mohalla Sabha’, concept of self-governance. AAP had attempted the Mohalla sabhas to be a revolutionary concept to bring swaraj, or participatory democracy. The Delhi government had set aside a sum of Rs 20 crore for each of the 12 shortlisted assembly seats during the budget session of 2015. The released money also reached the mohalla sabhas: each of them got Rs 55 lakh. However, nobody seems to know where the money is with deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia saying, “It is not in my ambit. I can’t comment on it.” An India Today TV investigation has found the money allocated remains unaccounted for and so does the work promised by the administration. Again, apart from blaming the centre, Marlena has not accomplished much in there as well.
Aitishi Marlena is just a person with a glamorous “oxford degree” tag which has lead to much publicity. Her performance with the party has been substandard as best. Moreover, the real statistics conclusively prove that her tag as the ‘pioneer of Delhi’s education reform’ is nothing but media hype.
Arvinder Singh Lovely, the Congress candidate from East Delhi constituency, has neither the charisma or popularity of Gautam Gambhir nor the kind of media hype surrounding Atishi. Arvinder was, until 2017, in BJP. The turn-coat image is not likely to go down well with the voters as well.
In terms of ground realities as of now, Gautam Gambhir seems be ahead of his competitions in the constituency.