Congress and BJP on Sunday attacked Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati for criticising the lack of funds for the Right to Education Act, saying the state government spent more on building statues and employing security men to guard them.
"Uttar Pradesh (government) has loads of money that they are spending on memorials. If that very money was to be diverted to empower the children of Uttar Pradesh and of course the children of India, perhaps that would be money better spent," HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said, reacting to Mayawati's remark in Lucknow yesterday.
BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Pradesh too hit out at the Chief Minister, saying, "Mayawati has money only for the statues... that's the real problem."
Mayawati had yesterday criticised the UPA government for enacting and implementing the RTE without provisioning funds for the programme and asked the Central government to provide the money for imparting compulsory education to children of the state. Sibal said no other Chief Minister had raised an issue of this nature with regard to the RTE and that the law should not be politicised.
"I do not think that other Chief Ministers have raised issues of this nature and I do not think we have to inject politics on an issue that deals with the empowerment of children," he added. Prasad, on his part said, Mayawati had also spoken of unavailability of funds to compensate the victims of a recent stampede at an ashram in Uttar Pradesh. "She has funds for statues, security guards for those statues and such things," he added. PTI
