Kejriwal lied about regularising migrant Kashmiri Pandit teachers

Amid the controversy spurred by Arvind Kejriwal by calling ‘The Kashmir Files’ a “Jhoothi film” in the Delhi Legislative Assembly, snippets of an interview of Arvind Kejriwal is going viral on social media where he claims that more than 200 Kashmiri Pandits were working as a teacher in Delhi Schools who were not on a permanent basis. He regularised them from the start of their tenure and gave them long overdue benefits. Apart from that, Kejriwal says he didn’t make any fuss about it and just did it as it was the right thing to do. 

“Kashmir se jab palayan hua, Delhi main bhi aaye kuch log. Unme se 233 log Delhi sarkar main contract teacher ban gaye, kacche teacher ban gaye 1993 main. Tab se lekar aaj tak Delhi main BJP ki bhi sarkar aai, Delhi main Congress ki bhi sarkar aai. Unhone unn ke liye kuch bhi nhi kiya. Hamari jab sarkar aai, maine un 233 teachers ko pakka kiya. Ye aapko to nhi pta, ye to kisi ko bhi nhi pata. Humne kar diya, humne unka kaam kar diya. Un 233 teachers humne pakka kiya. Aur retrospective effect se kiya. Purana sara unka dues, 1993 se unko pakka kiya, retrospective effect se.” he said.

But it was Delhi HC who ordered the Kejriwal led government to regularise the teachers. On May 23, 2018, the court directed the regularisation of over 200 Kashmiri migrant teachers who have been working in Delhi government and municipal schools on contract for over two decades, saying it was a “sad day” for the society that teachers have to move the court for their rightful claim.

“The petitioners’ hope of returning to their homes and for peace in the Valley, may not yet be attainable, but the acceptance of their claims should act like a balm, re-kindle their confidence in the society and our commitment to equality and equal opportunity,” a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Deepa Sharma observed.

“That this was the case with migrant teachers who had to toil for these 20 years with less than the minimum scale, is a sad commentary for the state which in the first place could not assure the security and safety of their lives and possessions that led them to flee their native state and become refugees, in a manner of speaking, in their own country,” the bench said.

In the wake of confronting backlash over his comments on ‘The Kashmir Files’ in the Delhi Assembly, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that his speech has been “presented in a wrong way”. In a meeting with Press, the public convener of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said all he had requested was that everybody ought to transcend the partisan division and work for the recovery of Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley.

Considering the mass migration of the Kashmiri Pandits a “colossal misfortune” and “unfairness”, Kejriwal let the questioner know that a touchy government ought to have given land to Kashmiri Pandits for their resettlement and shaped an arrangement towards it.

He said the BJP government hasn’t done anything for the Pandits. “For BJP, The Kashmir Files is important. For me, Kashmiri Pandits are more important. When Pandits migrated from Kashmir, 233 Pandits had joined the Delhi government as contract teachers in 1993. When our government came, we made all of them permanent. We didn’t make a film on them,” Kejriwal added.

On Thursday, the Delhi Chief Minister had designated the BJP pioneers for advancing the film and condemned the move of making it tax-exempt. He, then, proceeded to recommend that the movie producer, Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, ought to transfer The Kashmir Files on YouTube so that all might see liberated from cost.

Anupam Kher has hammered Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over his ‘Crude, Insensitive’ comments on The Kashmir Files. In another meeting, Anupam said that CM Kejriwal was attempting to do a ‘stand up comedian’s job’ in the Delhi Assembly. He likewise added that Arvind Kejriwal shouldn’t appear to be a personification. Reprimanding his The Kashmir Files remark, Anupam said that even an uneducated individual doesn’t talk in such away.