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Gujarat Minister misspells elephant, was testing students’ ability to detect spelling errors
Gujarat minister Shankar Chaudhary, who claims of holding an MBA degree, misspells ‘elephant’ during school enrolment drive, says it was to check the ability of students to detect spelling errors.
During Government's school enrolment drive, Gujarat minister Shankar Chaudhary was teaching students when he misspelt the word ‘elephant’.
The minister visited a government-run primary school in Deesa town of Banaskantha district, around 150km from Ahmedabad, as part of a government programme carried out every year called the Shala Praveshotsav (school enrolment drive).
The incident came under limelight when a picture showing him writing a wrong spelling of elephant while teaching English as part of the drive went viral on social media.
The minister of state for urban housing, health and transport, in the picture, is seen writing ‘elephent’ instead of ‘elephant’ on the blackboard.
Chaudhary came out with a clarification, as the issue became a hot topic of discussion among citizens on social media platforms, saying that he deliberately misspelt the word to test the ability of schoolchildren to detect spelling errors.
‘My objective was to check the English grammar and spelling proficiency among school children. I had intentionally written wrong spelling of elephant to check whether the students can find out the error and learn to write the right spelling,’ Chaudhary said in a statement on Friday.
‘After writing ‘elephent’ instead of elephant, I gave example of ‘Deesa’. I wrote two spellings of the town — Deesa and Disa — on the blackboard and told them to choose the correct one.'
‘It was my attempt to make them understand language and spellings. Since media only showed the photo with wrong spelling, it appeared otherwise,’ said the statement.
Recently, a petition in the Gujarat high court was filed alleging Shankar Chaudhary’s MBA degree was ‘fake’. However, the court disposed of the petition.
Image courtesy: TruthOfGujarat