RTE behind poor state of education, says Maluka

Bathinda, January 3
Education Minister Sikander Singh Maluka today accused the Centre, a sub-judice case and the Right To Education Act for the poor state of education in the state.He was in the city to address SAD workers during the bhog of an akhand path at Haji Ratan Gurdwara. He said, “The Centre has been rolling out policies and schemes for the entire nation while it should be the prerogative of the state.”


“A large number of teachers have been rendered unemployed due to the schemes of the Centre,” he added. When asked about the poor state of education in elementary schools in the state, he blamed the Centre for introducing the Right To Education Act (RTE). “As per the RTE, schools can not detain a weak student in a class till the eighth standard. The students know this and are not afraid of failing. They do not want to pay much attention to studies due to it,” he said.

Stating that the state government was all set to fill 14,000 vacant posts of teachers, he said a sub-judice case in the court was keeping the government from recruiting more teachers.

He praised his party for striking deals with some of the leading business houses in the country. He said the government was planning to host a summit on the lines of the Progressive Punjab Investors’ Meet.

He said a similar kind of meet may be organised in February. He expressed hope that the SAD-BJP alliance would win all the 13 Lok Sabha seats in the upcoming elections and exhorted the party workers to work hard and make sure that the sitting Bathinda MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal represented the district in the Parliament again.

He also took a dig at the Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee and called the Congress a “headless” and “directionless” party. “The Congress is busy in nitpicking and blaming the SAD-BJP alliance for things that have not even happened. The party should instead look inwards and settle the infighting. The Congress will fall flat in the next Lok Sabha elections,” he said.

When asked about Delhi CM Arvind Kejrival's decision to take away the red-beacon from Delhi ministers and officials, Maluka voted in the decision’s favour. He said Deputy Chief Minister of Punjab Sukhbir Singh Badal was the first one to take a step in this direction.