LG should stop taking credit: Sisodia on appointment of principals

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia issued a fresh rebuttal upon Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena's remarks over the appointment of principals in government schools.

He said, "The LG has stalled the appointment of principals by bypassing the education minister. LG is lying by claiming delay on part of the government; he has directed education department officials to report to him and not the minister."

Deputy CM Sisodia said in a statement, "Delhi LG had recently issued a statement making contradictory claims about his move to delay the appointment of 244 principals under the garb of approval of 126 posts. This is the second such statement issued by the LG which was completely bereft of the facts of the matter. Earlier this week, on February 4 and 5, I had issued his response to the LG's claims and had asked him to not play politics over the issue and instead explain why he has been delaying such crucial appointments."

Sisodia further said the fact is that the school principals posts are vacant and the schools are running without Principals. On the Directions of the LG, the files with respect to appointments of school principals are not shown to the Education Minister. The non-appointment of Principals is a failure of LG's functioning.

"If the LG becomes in-charge of the Service department and takes all decisions bypassing the Education Minister then who is responsible for the failure? Why were these 244 posts not filled in time? Who is responsible for the failure that School Principal posts were vacant for more than 5 years?" he said.

He alleged that it is the LG who has stalled the appointments of Principals bypassing the Education Minister. And now again the files were submitted to the LG bypassing the Education Minister under instructions from the LG.

The Delhi Deputy CM said the posts of Principals in these 244 schools need to be filled urgently.

"I request that there is no need to study the need when these schools are already functioning. It just needs a decision from the LG that all these posts need to be fulfilled immediately without any study of need for these posts," Sisodia said.

He further said, "The LG claims that he approved the abolition of 244 posts based on the proposal of the Education Department. Can he confirm if the file was routed to him through the Education Minister? Has he not directed the officials to directly put up the file to him bypassing the Minister on matters related to service?"

Sisodia said the LG is just misleading the people of Delhi by falsely appropriating the credit for the revival of 126 posts while putting the remaining 244 posts on the back burner.

Delhi LG VK Saxena approved the revival of 126 posts of Principal/Deputy Education Officers that had lapsed due to apathy and inaction of Aam Admi Party government and were lying vacant for more than two years, an official statement from the Raj Niwas said on Saturday.

An official said that this move would help the woefully short-staffed Education Department of GNCTD, especially at the cutting-edge level.

According to an official, L-G has also put on hold a proposal to abolish 244 posts of Principal/ Deputy Education Officer as proposed by the Education Department, since the said posts had also been lying vacant for more than five years.