The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Punjab is celebrating the state’s improved performance in national education surveys, years after its leaders had dismissed the same rankings as unreliable and “fake”.
Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Monday cited the 2024 National Educational Survey to highlight Punjab’s strong showing, claiming the state has even surpassed Kerala in overall educational performance and exposure.
Mann attributed the improvement to initiatives introduced by the AAP government.
However, records show that Punjab’s rise in rankings had begun even before the AAP came to power.
In the Performance Grading Index (PGI), the state moved from 22nd position in 2017–18 to 13th in 2018–19, and reached the top spot in 2019–20.
Punjab also topped the PGI 2.0 for both 2022–23 and 2023–24, while Chandigarh remained No. 1 in those years as well.
When the rankings were released in 2021, AAP leaders had rejected them outright. Then Education Minister Meet Hayer had called the results “fudged figures”.
Chief Minister Mann, while responding to a query in the Punjab Assembly, had termed it a “fake number one ranking” and promised to show how to achieve a “real number one ranking”.
Opposition leaders, including Punjab Congress president Amrinder Singh Raja Warring and former education minister Pargat Singh, accused the AAP government on Monday of taking credit for improvements that had started before it assumed office.
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