Chandigarh, August 26, 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
Senior Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and Punjab in-charge Manish Sisodia on Wednesday urged critics of the state’s government schools to compare the current situation with their condition before 2022, saying the Bhagwant Mann government had brought significant changes in infrastructure and academic outcomes in four-and-a-half years.
Sisodia said nearly 20,000 government schools had witnessed improvements including more than 9,000 new classrooms and labs, 13,920 toilets, two lakh desks and over 10,000 interactive panels. He also said advanced computer labs had been established in 5,012 schools, all government schools had Wi-Fi and boundary walls had been completed in 99 per cent of schools. These figures are also reflected in recent statements by Punjab Education Minister Harjot Singh Bains.
“When Bhagwant Singh Mann became Chief Minister in 2022, most government schools in Punjab did not have toilets, four lakh children were sitting on floors, and thousands of schools did not even have access to drinking water,” Sisodia said.
He said more than 7,000 schools were affected by two major floods and restoration work on 500 severely damaged schools was underway. “Much more work is still underway, but the direction, speed and intent are absolutely clear,” he said.
Sisodia urged journalists to present the complete picture and compare the AAP government’s four-and-a-half-year record with the 15–20 years of Congress and Akali-BJP rule.
He also highlighted academic outcomes, saying 3.64 lakh children had shifted from private to government schools, while the number of NEET qualifiers from government schools had increased from 80 in 2021 to 882 in 2026. Punjab government figures also put the number of government-school students qualifying for NEET over four years at 2,166 and JEE at 786.
Sisodia said 2.30 lakh children had received entrepreneurship exposure through Business Blasters, 40 Skill Education Schools had been started and Punjab had become the first state to introduce AI education from Classes 1 to 12.
“There is no claim that the work of education in Punjab is complete. But there is certainly proof that decades of deterioration have been transformed in four years,” he said.
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