'Cut my ticket if you want': AAP suspends MLA who exposed empty classrooms in Punjab's 'education revolution'

Sukhveer Singh Maiserkhana, the Aam Aadmi Party MLA from Maur in Bathinda, did something no ruling-party legislator is supposed to do: he told the truth about his own government's schools. For that, his party has suspended him. In an emotional Facebook Live on October 3, Maiserkhana flagged an acute shortage of teachers in government schools in his constituency. The issue, he said, hit close to home: his own children study in state-run schools, making him the only sitting MLA in Punjab to have enrolled his children in government institutions. School staff, he revealed, had asked his son to seek his father's help in filling vacant teacher posts. "I am not fighting against schools; I am fighting for them," he said, adding that he had repeatedly raised the vacancies with the government and senior party leaders, but no solution had come. He highlighted a government school in Burj Sahima village that met the criteria for upgradation but had not been upgraded. He admitted he had not been able to secure even a meeting with Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann despite being a ruling-party legislator. "If you want to cut my ticket, then cut it," he said, "I could not tolerate it anymore." The party's answer came swiftly. AAP's Punjab general secretary Harchand Singh Barsat issued a notice suspending Maiserkhana's primary membership with immediate effect, citing "anti-party activities and indiscipline." The suspension has shredded the party's flagship narrative. AAP has made school education a central part of its political identity, trumpeting its Schools of Eminence scheme, teacher training programmes and foundational-learning initiatives as an "education revolution." The irony is brutal: the one AAP MLA who actually sent his children to government schools is the one who found the revolution missing from the classrooms. The Indian Express reported that during the 2025-26 academic session, Maiserkhana was the only AAP MLA with school-going children whose children studied in government schools; 30 of the 31 others opted for private schools or institutions abroad. The man who believed the party's own pitch is the man the party has now expelled. The opposition has pounced. BJP leader R P Singh said Maiserkhana "held up a mirror to the AAP Chief Minister, which is why he got him suspended." Former Union Minister Ravneet Singh Bittu said the MLA's tears "expose the ground reality behind Punjab's much-publicised education model." Congress MP Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa noted the deeper humiliation: "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?" A government confident about its schools would have filled the vacancies. AAP chose instead to fill a suspension notice. The classrooms of Maur remain short of teachers; the party is short of answers.