Delhi Teachers University Bill sails through assembly

The Delhi Assembly on Tuesday passed the Delhi Teachers University Bill, which seeks to set up a teachers’ training university.

The campus of the Delhi Teachers University is coming up at Bakkarwala in east Delhi, and the government has said that it will enrol 5,000 students starting this year. The university will offer four-year integrated teacher education programmes such as BA-BEd, BSc-BEd among others.

Deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who also holds the education portfolio, had introduced the Bill in the House on Monday. During a discussion on the Bill on Tuesday, Sisodia said that the university will set a new benchmark for teachers’ training in the country and enhance the quality of education.

While taking a potshot at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sisodia said that the upcoming sports university in Meerut was being modelled on the same lines as the sports university in Delhi.

“It is pleasant to see that the sports university in Meerut, where the foundation stone has been laid, is being developed exactly like the sports university of Delhi because till date neither Gujarat nor any other Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-governed state has created any such model from where they could copy. Therefore, the UP government and the Prime Minister are copying the Kejriwal model,” said Sisodia.

Leader of the Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, Ramvir Singh Bidhuri, meanwhile, accused the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of not opening any new colleges in the city. Bidhuri said that the AAP government was only announcing universities for publicity. “The government announced a sports university and even appointed a vice-chancellor, but nothing is known about it,” said Bidhuri. He said that no new college had been opened by the AAP government and an attempt was being made to “rob existing colleges” by giving them the “shape of a university”.