AAP MLA flags teacher shortage in govt school his son goes to, party suspends him

The Indian Express Investigation

Going live on Facebook, the first-time MLA said he regretted enrolling his children in government schools, claiming their “future was at stake” because of the shortage of teachers.

Maiserkhana alleged that repeated pleas to senior party leaders, including former Delhi education minister and Punjab affairs in-charge Manish Sisodia, had failed to resolve the shortage. The MLA further claimed that even Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann did not meet him. “How long will I tolerate? What did I do wrong to the party?” he said, adding the party leadership’s apathy forced him to raise the issue publicly.

The AAP MLA said he knows he will be denied a ticket for contesting the upcoming polls. “But I will continue to fight for people,” he said and added that he may be booked too.

“My children study where the children of 3 crore common Punjabis also study… and that’s why I am speaking today as a father. The future of my children is at stake. The issue of teacher shortage is not being addressed in the schools where my children study,” he said.

Questioning the government’s claims of an education revolution, he said even the Schools of Eminence, set up by the AAP government as model institutions, lacked adequate teachers.

“I have got tired of saying that please give teachers, please give teachers… I called Manish Sisodia and told him that my kids study in government schools and even in those schools, there aren’t enough teachers…I always worked for the party’s betterment… and now they are isolating and ignoring me, removing me from everywhere. Why? Just because I am fighting for the schools, for my own children, and for the children of all those who send their children to government schools,” he said.

Declaring that he would not remain silent, Maiserkhana dared the government to “do wrong to me, but not my children”.

“If nothing has been done in schools, how will we ask for votes from people? In entire Punjab, I am the only MLA whose kids study in government schools. If I won’t raise voice, who will? Did I do anything wrong by enrolling my kids in a government school? I think it was a big mistake. Arrest and jail me but I will speak for my and people’s children who study in government schools,” he added.

Maiserkhana’s son is enrolled in a School of Eminence in Bathinda district and the daughter in another state-run primary school.

AAP insiders meanwhile claimed that the MLA’s outburst came after he got to know that the party would be denying him ticket for 2027 polls due to “non-performance.”

The AAP, in an official statement, denied the allegations and said Maiserkhana had attempted to defame the party by making a false statement that only one teacher was doing duty at the School of Eminence in Bathinda.

“The claim was contrary to the official record issued by the school principal on September 29, 2026. According to the record, the school has 30 sanctioned teaching posts, of which 25 are currently filled. The staff posted at the school includes one principal, seven lecturers, 15 teachers from the Master Cadre and two Computer Science teachers. The school currently has 580 students studying from Classes 6 to 12 across 19 sections,” read the statement.

It said five sanctioned posts are presently vacant, and the school principal has already submitted a written request for filling these vacancies and sanctioning additional posts wherever required.

“The official record clearly establishes that the claim of there being only one teacher in the entire school was factually incorrect,” the party statement said, and reiterated that “discipline is paramount in the organisation and that every elected representative is expected to uphold the party’s principles and maintain factual accuracy while speaking in public”.

“Attempts to spread misinformation among the public or damage the party’s image would not be tolerated, irrespective of the position held by the person concerned,” it added.

Latching on to Maiserkhana’s statement, the BJP said the AAP MLA’s remarks have “punctured the ‘education revolution’ narrative” by the ruling party in the state.

Former Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu said the ruling party’s MLAs’ “tears expose the ground reality” in state. “When a ruling-party MLA has to come on social media and appeal for adequate teachers in schools in his own constituency, it raises serious questions about the situation faced by ordinary families and lakhs of students across Punjab,” Bittu wrote on X.

SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal said AAP’s “fake” ‘Sikhya Kranti’ has been “exposed” by its own MLA. “Four years on, they can’t even provide teachers in classrooms. What is the point of renaming schools as ‘Schools of Eminence’ when there are no basic facilities? Their own MLA says his children complain about the lack of teachers; principals come begging, but the government doesn’t listen. Instead of wasting crores of rupees in the advertisement of these schools, they should have recruited the staff,” Badal said.

Punjab Congress president Pargat Singh said, “What we have been saying for the past four and a half years, the AAP’s false education revolution built on publicity and its dictatorship has today been laid bare by Maiserkhana himself. Like many Punjabis, Maiserkhana too had been influenced by AAP’s Delhi model and its false claims of an education revolution. Today, he himself has brought to light the reality of teachers and facilities in schools,” he said

Congress MP Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa too said that a sitting AAP MLA says he has repeatedly raised basic issues like repairing schools and appointing teachers, yet nobody listened. “Now, he says that despite being a sitting MLA of the ruling party, he cannot even get an appointment with the chief minister. If an ‘Aam Aadmi’ MLA cannot even meet his own chief minister, then what does that say about the ordinary people who are trying to be heard?,” Randhawa asked.

The Indian Express investigation in March had found that during the 2025-26 academic session, 36 MLAs had school-going children, including 31 from the AAP, but the others sent their wards to private schools in India or institutions abroad.

Maiserkhana, an agriculturist by profession, had won the Maur seat in Bathinda district by a margin of more than 35,000 votes in 2022.

When asked by The Indian Express why he had chosen government schools for his children, Maiserkhana had said: “If we won’t admit our own children in government schools, how can we convince the people to do that? That is how chain reaction starts. 50 more parents had followed me.”

He had said the decision was intended to keep his children connected to their community and mother tongue and build public confidence in government schools. He shifted his son from a local convent school to a government school during the Covid pandemic, while his daughter was enrolled directly in a state-run school.