LUCKNOW, Aug. 12 -- The Samajwadi Party (SP) staged a walkout in the Uttar Pradesh Vidhan Parishad (Legislative Council) on the school merger issue on the first day of the Monsoon Session of the State Legislative Assembly on Monday. SP MLCs Mukul Yadav, Ashutosh Sinha, Balram Yadav, Rajendra Chaudhary, Jasmeer Ansari and the leader of opposition in the Vidhan Parishad Lal Bihari Yadav raised the issue. "The level of education in the BJP regime is deteriorating day by day. The current dispensation doesn't want children of Dalits, backwards and minorities to get educated and that is why it is conspiring to keep children of these classes away from education," alleged Lal Bihari Yadav. "The government is planning to hand over education into private hands. The government should not look at education as a business. Instead of closing the schools, the government should focus on increasing the number of students," he claimed. Yadav also claimed that madrasas in the state, which were built by the money contributed as Zakat (donation) by the Muslim community, had to face unnecessary audits and investigations. Meanwhile, basic education minister Sandeep Singh in his reply said school merger was being done to improve the quality of education and promote classroom learning. "The state of education system in UP before 2017 is not hidden from anyone. Earlier, no one used to talk about increasing the number of students. There were around three crore children who were not getting education during the SP regime," the minister said. "School merger will also increase the grant money from the Centre which is given as per the number of students," he added. However, soon the SP MLCs interrupted and staged a walkout. Earlier, SP MLC Man Singh Yadav raised the issue of the old pension scheme. "If the new pension scheme is that good, why has it not been implemented for legislators and in the judiciary?" he asked. Another SP MLC Ashutosh Sinha demanded that the state government employees should be given a choice between the old and the new pension schemes. Moreover, BJP MLCs Jai Pal Singh 'Vyastha' and Anoop Kumar Gupta congratulated Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Air Force for being the first Indian ever to set foot on the International Space Station (ISS)....