Claim Check: Narendra Modi on poor school infrastructure in West Bengal
Modi says only 35% schools in West Bengal have electricity and only 60% girls' schools have toilets
Claim: Only 35% schools in West Bengal have electricity and only 60% girls’ schools have toilets.
Who: Narendra Modi, Gujarat chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate.
Where: At a public meeting in Kolkata on 5 February.
Check: He is correct, based on publicly available data.
According to statistics collected under a human resource development ministry programme, 35.48% of West Bengal schools have electricity; and only 59.3% have a functional girls’ toilets (data is from 2011-12).
More recent data from the Annual Status of Education Report (Aser) only has information on toilets in rural schools. It says 53.7% of schools (in villages) in West Bengal have functional girls’ toilets.
To be sure, this has been contested by the Trinamool Congress-led West Bengal government, which claimed that all schools had electricity and 82.8% had a functional toilet for girls. These figures are being displayed on the state government’s school education department site. Mint could not independently verify these numbers.
Source: District information system on education, 2011-12; Annual Status of Education Report 2013; West Bengal school education department website
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