New Delhi: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia on Monday laid the foundation of building 11,000 new classrooms for Delhi's government schools and used the event to seek votes for their Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the Lok Sabha battle.
Addressing children and parents at the Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya at New Friends Colony after laying the foundation, both leaders asked the parents to choose who they love more: Prime Minister Narendra Modi or their children.
"If you love your children, vote for those who are working for your children and if you don't love your children then go and vote for Modiji. Modiji has not built even a single classroom or a school. You have to choose between love for nation or love for Modi," Kejriwal added.
His deputy Sisodia also asked the students to thank their parents as they voted for AAP. "If the parents had not voted for AAP (in 2015), how could the party had worked for you and Delhi?" He also thanked the parents for voting AAP.
"Outside the schools, there is an atmosphere in the country where people are doing politics of temple and mosque. But the Delhi government is doing politics of building schools and education.”
"I asked someone who he will vote for. He said he will vote for Modi. On being asked why he said he likes and love Modiji. I said if you really love your children, vote for those who are building schools for them," said Sisodia, also the Education Minister.
Addressing the students, he added: "Go home and ask your parents if they love you or not. If they say they love you, ask them to vote for those who are building schools."
The Delhi government started the construction of these 11,000 new classrooms in the national capital from Monday and is aiming to complete the work by the year-end.
Delhi PWD Minister Satyendar Jain, who was present at the event, said: "Delhi alone is going to build 11,000 classrooms this year and the number is more than the classrooms built by all the state governments and the Central government."
Kejriwal, speaking about the work done by his government, said in four years they gave a total of 21,000 classrooms to Delhi's schools.
"Currently, there are 1,100 schools in Delhi with about 24,000 classrooms. Now 21,000 more classrooms will be built, so we can say 1,000 new schools are going to be built in the national capital," he added.