Dharmendra Pradhan, Manish Sisodia meet to discuss education, NEP 2020

NEW DELHI: Union education minister Pradhan Dharmendra Pradhan met Delhi's deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Sunday to talk about the quality education system and ways to improve it. They also discussed implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

"We had valuable discussions on building quality education systems in the country, capacity building of teachers, grooming future leaders in school & equipping youth with market-relevant skills,” wrote Pradhan in a social media post.

Pleasure meeting Shri @msisodia, Deputy CM and Education Min., Govt. of NCT of Delhi. We had valuable discussions on building quality education systems in the country, capacity building of teachers, grooming future leaders in school & equipping youth with market-relevant skills. pic.twitter.com/LPU1JnvlAR

— Dharmendra Pradhan (@dpradhanbjp) July 18, 2021

Manish Sisodia gifted Pradhan his book, Shiksha, education reforms in Delhi. The book was published in September 2019, about six months before the 2020 Delhi Elections. "We all need committed governance to work on quality education. I'm sure such discussions would lead to effective implementation of NEP also," Sisodia wrote on Twitter.

I'm grateful to Hon Union Education Minister @dpradhanbjp ji for his valuable time. I gifted him my book Shiksha on Delhi edu reforms. We all need committed governance to work on quality education.

I m sure such discussions would lead to effective implementation of NEP also. https://t.co/7605rQsOaj pic.twitter.com/byW81zMjYc

— Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) July 18, 2021

Last week, Dharmendra Pradhan also met the Tamil Nadu health minister M Subramanian to discuss, among other things, the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission to medicine.

AAP, BJP, Education

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)-led Delhi Government has quarrelled often with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union Government over a range of issues, including education.

Most recently, it was the education ministry's Performance Grading Index or PGI. When Punjab was ranked on top of the PGI 2019-20, Manish Sisodia alleged that the ranking was proof of prime minister, BJP's Narendra Modi and the Punjab chief minister, Captain Amarinder Singh's "secret" friendship. "Captain (Amarinder Singh) has got the blessings of Modiji. Delhi's schools have been ranked much below. Nearly 800 government schools in Punjab have been shut down in the last five years and many schools have been handed over to private entities but Punjab has been ranked on the top," he said. He further said that the index is a way to hide the poor condition of the government schools of Punjab.

Also Read | Why Punjab teachers are unhappy in India’s ‘best’ school education system

Punjab had taken a leap from the 11th position in 2017-18 to first in 2019-20 in the annual index.

Later, Amarinder Singh called Sisodia’s allegations "atrocious". He said that the AAP leadership is so "obsessed" with electoral politics that it saw poll conspiracies even in something as basic as school education.

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