Arvind Kejriwal has never shied away from turning school education into a political battleground, and the AAP national convener’s latest round of comments is no exception. Riding high on Punjab’s recent leap to the top of NITI Aayog’s School Education Quality Index, Kejriwal has renewed his long-running challenge to the BJP: put Gujarat’s government schools next to Punjab’s and let the public decide which model actually works. It’s the kind of governance debate that keeps resurfacing in news cycles every time state performance data drops. What Sparked This Round of the Debate
The trigger this time is Punjab’s performance in the NITI Aayog School Education Quality Index (SEQI) 2026, where the state climbed to the number one position, overtaking Kerala, which had long been considered India’s benchmark for school education. Punjab’s Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains presented a detailed four-year transformation report in the state assembly, crediting reforms like Mission Samarth, the PACE programme, Schools of Eminence, and AI-based education from Classes I through XII for the turnaround.
The numbers behind the claim are striking. According to the state government’s own presentation, infrastructure upgrades have been carried out in over 19,000 government schools, with officials noting that nearly 4 lakh students were previously sitting on classroom floors due to inadequate furniture — a problem they say has now largely been addressed. NEET-UG qualifiers from Punjab’s government schools reportedly jumped from just 80 in 2021 to 882 in 2026, alongside a sharp rise in JEE Main and JEE Advanced qualifiers, numbers the AAP government has been keen to publicise widely.
Kejriwal’s Recurring Line of Attack
This isn’t new territory for Kejriwal. He’s spent years positioning education as AAP’s signature achievement, first in Delhi and now in Punjab, while consistently pointing to Gujarat — a state the BJP has governed for nearly three decades — as an example of what he calls a neglected public education system. Earlier this year, after reports surfaced claiming that not a single student passed the Class 10 board exam in 157 Gujarat schools, Kejriwal was blunt in his response, calling it proof that the BJP wanted to keep the country “illiterate” and accusing the party of trying to replicate the same approach in Delhi’s schools now that it governs the capital too. That kind of pointed political messaging has become a regular feature of Uttar Pradesh and neighbouring state political coverage whenever governance comparisons come up between states.
More recently, Kejriwal shared a video of a newly refurbished library at a government school in Punjab, arguing that the transformation proves government schools “can be good” and that the difference ultimately comes down to what he called “neeyat” — intent. It’s a phrase he’s used repeatedly to frame the education debate not as a resource problem, but as a question of political will.
Why Gujarat Keeps Coming Up
Kejriwal’s fixation on Gujarat isn’t incidental. During AAP’s 2022 Gujarat assembly election campaign, he made education a central plank, alleging that around 6,000 schools had been shut down in the state through mergers and that many of the remaining ones were in poor enough condition that they weren’t fit for students. He went as far as inviting the then Gujarat Chief Minister to visit Delhi’s government schools and hospitals directly rather than criticising AAP’s model without seeing it firsthand.
That framing — Delhi and now Punjab as proof-of-concept, Gujarat as the cautionary example — has remained a consistent thread in his political messaging for years, regardless of which election cycle happens to be underway. For a party that entered national politics largely on the promise of fixing broken public services, education has become both a genuine policy focus and a reliable campaign talking point.
The BJP’s Pushback
Gujarat’s ruling party hasn’t taken these comparisons lying down. When similar claims resurfaced earlier this year following reports about Gujarat’s board exam results, state ministers dismissed them as a “clear attempt to spread misinformation” and accused opposition leaders of playing politics with children’s futures. The BJP has also previously sent official delegations to inspect AAP’s Delhi model schools directly, aiming to counter what it calls a “publicity-based” narrative around the party’s education reforms.
This back-and-forth over whose schools are genuinely better has effectively become a recurring feature of Indian political discourse whenever elections approach in AAP-adjacent states, with each side presenting its own data and ground reports to support opposing conclusions.
What This Means Going Forward
With Punjab’s NITI Aayog ranking now giving Kejriwal fresh ammunition, expect this comparison to resurface repeatedly in the coming months, particularly as both AAP and BJP continue positioning education as a core electoral issue heading into future state polls. Whether the comparison genuinely holds up to scrutiny on both sides remains a matter of ongoing debate between independent education researchers and each party’s own selectively presented data — but as a political talking point, it shows no signs of fading anytime soon. We’ll continue tracking how this debate develops through our regular news coverage.
This report is compiled based on statements made by Arvind Kejriwal on social media and public platforms, alongside data presented by the Punjab government and NITI Aayog’s School Education Quality Index 2026.
