New Delhi: The Centre's move to celebrate Teacher's Day as 'Guru Utsav' and planned interaction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi with school children on that day have kicked up a controversy with Congress coming down hard on the government.
"I don't think any PM or President of India has over the past 65 years compulsorily by diktat, by compulsion said that every private and public school from class 1 to 12. Every student from 1-12, thank God KG was exempted, must sit and listen and hear the PM," party spokesman Abhishek Singhvi told reporters.
He asked the BJP Government whether the class 1 or 2 students will understand the Prime Minister.
Besides, he wondered whether it was allowed to virtually make political propaganda to all the school children of India?
Has the Government ever used the machinery in this manner to propagate political or partly political view to young and impressionable minds and that too infants of 1-5 classes? he asked.
"But what matters is the hypocrisy first and foremost the constitutional issue whether such a exercise like this should be permitted using Government machinery", he said, adding it was a "cheap political tactics".
"We condemn this," he said.
