The move by the BJP-dominated Municipal School Board in Surat to distribute notebooks having photographs of party leaders to the students of municipal schools has been questioned by the opposition Aam Aadmi Party.
According to reports, the notebooks, carrying photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Gujarat BJP president C. R. Paatil and national BJP president J. P. Nadda, have been distributed to about 1.80 lakh students of few classes in the schools run by the Board.
The Board is an autonomous body and 80 per cent grants come from the state government and the remaining 20 per cent from Surat Municipal Corporation. In the 15-member Committee, 14 members are from the BJP and one from AAP.
The issue was raised by AAP member Rakesh Hirapara in the general body meeting of the Surat Municipal School Board on Monday. He questioned the relevance of the photographs and said that ideally photographs of leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and B. R. Ambedkar should be there for the students to draw inspiration.
Hirapara told Vibes of India that a photo of the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister was still okay but what was the reason for the photographs of other people. He further said that last year the Board had given bags to the children and the bags had Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s photograph. “We did not object to it,” he said.
Apparently, the BJP members had no answers to Hirapara’s questions. While one Rakesh Kadia said that these leaders were the source for their inspiration, another BJP member Vinod Gajjar said that the BJP is in power. The AAP leader was told that photographs of AAP leaders won’t be there as the Board is not ruled by them.
Hirapara argued that when they had put up photographs of Paatil and Nadda on the grounds that they are cabinet ministers then a photograph of Praful Pansheriya, who is Gujarat’s education minister and hails from Surat, should have been also there.
He told Vibes of India that the party would continue to oppose it so that they do not distribute such notebooks in future.
Isudan Ghadvi, Gujarat unit president of the AAP, told Vibes of India that such photographs should not be there if the initiative is by the government.
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