Fact Check: Video of Delhi Education Minister Atishi inspecting MCD school being shared with misleading claim

New Delhi (Vishvas News): A video of Delhi Education Minister Atishi Marlena inspecting a dilapidated school is going viral on social media. In the video, Atishi could be heard criticising the management for the poor condition of the school. The viral post claims that the school is run by the Delhi government and Atishi “inadvertently exposed the truth” of the AAP government led by Arvind Kejriwal.

Vishvas News found the claim to be misleading as the school Atishi Marlena visited falls under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), and not the Delhi government. After AAP won the MCD elections held in December 2022, Delhi’s new education minister Atishi has been inspecting schools under the municipal body for the past few days.

Claim:

Sharing the video on April 11, 2023, Facebook user Amit Sharma wrote in the caption, “This is the world class education model created by Education Minister Manish Sisodia, which khujliwala boasts of in the country and the world, and now new education minister Atishi is tearing apart their own education model.”

The archived link to the post can be accessed here.

Investigation:

To know the truth of the viral video, we started searching on Google with related keywords. During this, we found the full video uploaded on the official YouTube channel of the Aam Aadmi Party. The video was uploaded on April 10, 2023. According to the information given, Delhi Education Minister Atishi Marlena and Delhi Mayor Shelly Oberoi had visited Wazirabad village to inspect a school under the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). In the video, she can also be seen scolding the officials for the poor infrastructure and maintenance of the school.

During investigation, we found a report published on the website of ABP News on April 11, 2023. According to the report, Minister Atishi and Mayor Shelly Oberoi’s school visits have been going on for the last few days after the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections. Atishi has visited many schools of MCD and warned many principals and education officers of the zone after seeing the filth, pile of garbage, absence of principals and negligence of teachers and other problems there. According to the report, the Education Minister was shocked to see the bad condition of a school in Wazirabad.

Other news reports can be read here.

According to a report published on The Indian Express, the Aam Aadmi Party won the Delhi civic elections in December 2022. Before this, BJP was in power for 15 years.

According to information given in a report by ABP, “A Municipal Corporation of Delhi is an independent body. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi functions under the provisions of the Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957. Along with this, the central government cannot interfere in the day-to-day functioning of the MCD. It is also separate from the Delhi government. The job of the MCD is to take care of the healthcare facilities and work on measures to prevent the spread of diseases. Apart from this, the work of cleaning roads shorter than 60 feet, and market areas is also done by MCD. If we look at the education sector, then the education department of MCD works only for primary education, that is, MCD has only primary schools. Along with this, MCD is responsible for the maintenance of roads, overbridges and public toilets. The municipal body also manages MCD water supply, drainage system, development of slum areas, and street lights. Many parking places in Delhi also come under the MCD.

For more information, we contacted Aam Aadmi Party’s media co-ordinator Ved Kumar. He told us that the claim being made over the video is false. He said, “This video is from a school run by the MCD. Delhi’s Education Minister Atishi Marlena has gone on a tour to know about the condition of schools in Delhi. This video is from that time.”

At the end of the investigation, we scanned the account of Facebook user Amit Sharma who shared the video with the fake claim. We found that the user has been active on Facebook since November 2009. The user has 5,000 Facebook friends and 25,652 followers. On scanning the profile we found that the user is influenced by a particular ideology.