By IANS,
Ahmedabad : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Gujarat squandered away central funds meant for primary and higher education on organising festivals and generating publicity, the Congress party said here Tuesday.
“While the BJP government in Gujarat talks about stepmotherly treatment from the central government on the matter of allocation of funds for various development and welfare schemes, the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) regime during the past four years had released Rs.1,715.05 crore for developing infrastructure for primary and higher education compared to a paltry Rs.506.65 crore released by the previous NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government,” Gujarat Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi said in a statement.
He said many of the ambitious educational projects have not even taken off in Gujarat during Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s rule. The state government was not able to fill up even 40 percent of the vacancies in the faculty positions in the government educational institutions of higher learning during the past four years, he said.
Only four of the 14 government engineering colleges in the state have all faculty positions filled up, the spokesperson added.
Doshi said the BJP government spent only Rs.16 lakh under the centrally sponsored mid-day meal scheme against the the central government’s total release of Rs.266.57 crore for the purpose during the past four years.