Taking a dig at Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and calling him nirantar virodhi (a perennial opponent),Union Minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday alleged that several claims made by the BJPs prime ministerial candidate for 2014 Assembly polls were false. There is a person called Narendra. nirantar virodhi, Sibal said while addressing students of Delhi Universitys St Stephens College as part of the Mukherjee lecture series. Have you heard anything positive that he has said? Has he spoken about education? Has he ever talked about health, he asked the audience. The minister spoke of Modi comparing Indian expenditure on education to that in China. The Gujarat CM had earlier said that China spent 30 per cent of its GDP on education alone. Modi ki adalat mein,hum sab hain zero,woh khud ko samajhte hain hero (In Modis opinion,all of us are zero,while he thinks he is the hero), Sibal said. Stating that Modi talks about Gujarat all the time,Sibal said,He says he will convert Hindustan into Gujarat. We say that we will convert Gujarat into Hindustan. While pointing to the problems in the Gujarat model of development,Sibal said,More children have dropped out of school in Gujarat than in any other state in the country. Criticising the Opposition for disrupting the functioning of Parliament,Sibal said,The nature of discourse in Parliament is opposition for the sake of opposition. The parliamentary process cannot function unless all parties believe that the nation comes first. Sibal also spoke of the increasing demand for higher education. I am trying to connect 250 gram panchayats with fibre optics we have to bring in private and foreign universities. We have also put in place a National Knowledge Network . All universities now must convert to the semester system, he said.
