Chandigarh, September 12
Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring today said that the Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab had used its proxy, the Cockroach Janta Party, to divert the public attention from Gulzar Singh’s suicide abetted by the Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema.
Warring also questioned the credentials of the CJP in praising the failed education system in Punjab which had completely collapsed under the AAP government.
The PCC president noted that it is no secret that the CJP is a proxy of the AAP and it was subtly and openly pursuing the AAP agenda. “When the AAP government in Punjab was under tremendous pressure to dismiss its finance minister Harpal Cheema for abetting a Dalit, Gulzar Singh’s suicide, it brought the CJP activists for the so called audit of Punjab schools”, he said, while adding, this was done deliberately so that the focus shifts from Gulzar Singh’s suicide to the sorry state of education.
Otherwise, he remarked, the AAP knew it very well that the CJP’s praise for its failed education system will boomerang. But it still went ahead in the hope that it may push Gulzar Singh’s suicide to the background. “But we will not let that happen and Cheema has to resign and go to the jail and we will ensure that”, he asserted.
Referring to “sorry state” of education in the state, Warring said as many as 18,015 posts out of 1,03,052 sanctioned teacher posts were lying vacant, while 1,113 of the state’s 1,927 senior secondary schools did not have principals.
He said the shortage of teaching and administrative staff was not confined to ordinary government schools but was also visible in the government’s flagship Schools of Eminence programme.
He said, the Schools of Eminence in the state were facing more than 140 staff vacancies, raising questions about the government’s ability to provide the quality of education promised under the programme.
He said, the AAP’s ‘Schools of Eminence’ were actually the already existing Model Schools, which the AAP had only rechristened.
The Punjab Congress chief also cited a decline in enrolment in government schools, saying the number of students studying in them had fallen by around 1.54 lakh, while private schools had registered an increase of approximately 82,000 students.
Warring said the shift indicated a growing lack of confidence among parents in government schools and questioned the state government’s claims regarding the transformation of the public education system.
He further noted that a verification drive conducted in 2025 had detected around 70,000 fake student entries, which, he claimed, were being used to divert funds meant for schemes such as mid-day meals and scholarships.
He said that the condition of several government schools remained poor, with inadequate infrastructure, insufficient facilities and a shortage of basic resources affecting the learning environment.