Posts Tagged ‘VYAPAM Scam’
- In: Education | Government | Judiciary | Politics
- Leave a Comment
The Delhi High Court has not helped further the cause of transparency in public life by staying the direction of the Central Information Commission (CIC) to Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to permit examination of Class XII records of Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani. The High Court order was based on a petition filed by the CBSE which had claimed that the records were ‘personal information’.
It defies comprehension how someone’s educational qualifications can be ‘personal information’. The matter was raised earlier before a Metropolitan Magistrate who had also dismissed the petition with the argument that the ‘complainant (petitioner) may not have filed it if she was not a Central Minister’. The Magistrate had also noted ‘a great delay of 11 years’ in filing the complaint.
If one’s educational qualification falls in the category of ‘personal information’, then one’s criminal record should also be treated as ‘personal information’. After prolonged deliberations, the Election Commission of India has made it mandatory for aspirants to enter Parliament or a Legislature to make public all information about the prospective candidate including educational and criminal records.
The Election Commission has not taken it upon itself to scrutinise the accuracy of the particulars given by a candidate. It is left to the alert citizens to find through proper channels if the information given by a candidate is true or false.
The Metropolitan Magistrate’s argument that information about Smriti Irani’s educational records was being sought only because she is a Central Minister is also specious. People are interested in finding out the veracity of her claims only because she is an important public figure.
Forgery is fast becoming a norm rather than exception in India and is quite visible in educational fields. The Vyapam Scam of Madhya Pradesh Government can be cited as an example in which politicians, bureaucrats, judicial officers, police officers and free-lance racketeers joined hands for decades and destroyed careers of honest, hardworking youth. Smriti Irani’s stubborn resistance to her educational records being made public only confirms the suspicion that there may be something fishy about her educational claims. The Judiciary’s attitude can, at best, be described only as retrograde.
The Congress government of Harish Rawat in Uttarakhand is facing a crisis following large scale defections from the ruling party. Assembly Speaker Govind Singh Kunjwal has tried to save the government, for the time being, by allowing the Appropriation Bill to be passed by a voice vote. But Kunjwal has only followed what Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma had done last year. Kunjwal did it to save government. Sharma had done it to save corruption.
BJP general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya has described Kunjwal as an agent of chief minister Harish Rawat and has accused him of violating the provisions of the Constitution by allowing the Appropriation Bill to be passed by voice vote. BJP spokesman Munna Singh Chauhan said that ‘he (Kunjwal) has no moral right to preside over the proceedings of the State Assembly as he has brought his office into disrepute. He should resign immediately if he has even an iota of self-respect left in him’. BJP leaders perhaps think that only Congressmen should have self-respect, those belonging to BJP do not require it.
Appropriation Bill is a Constitutional provision. After the budget estimates have been passed by the Assembly, the Appropriation Bill is presented to the House in a prescribed manner, debated and voted, if the members so desire, and passed. The BJP leaders’ allegation is that Uttarakhand Assembly Speaker Kunjwal has not put the Appropriation Bill to vote as the members had desired and thus violated the provision of the Constitution. Madhya Pradesh Assembly Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma had done worse in his eagerness to save chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vyapam scam-related embarrassment.
Last year the budget session of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly was due to start on February 18. Two days before that, Digvijaya Singh threw a virtual bombshell. He submitted a sworn affidavit to the High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) claiming that the excel sheets in the computers of the Vyapam had been tampered with to save chief minister Chouhan. Later he released a copy of his affidavit with the “tampered” excel sheets at a press conference.
On February 24, STF told the media that an FIR had been registered against the Governor on the basis of the statements made by some Vyapam officials who had been arrested by Special Task Force (STF) over a year earlier and were in judicial custody. The STF did not explain why it waited for over a year to act on the allegations made by the Vyapam officials in custody.
The FIR against the Governor created a sensation but it did not dampen the clamour against the chief minister. As Chouhan found it too embarrassing to face the incessant Opposition demand in the House for his resignation, Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma abruptly adjourned the budget session sine die on a motion of Legal Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra as the House assembled on February 26 (though it was scheduled to last till March 27). Before adjourning the House, the Speaker declared the budget passed – as well as the Appropriation Bill introduced, admitted and passed, in flagrant violation of the rules.
The Appropriation Bill cannot be passed at 11 AM. Rule 158(2) of the Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business in the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha says that after introduction of the Appropriation Bill in the Vidhan Sabha, the Speaker will allot day or days for discussion of its various stages and “shall at 5.0 clock on the allotted day or as the case may be, the last of the allotted days, forthwith put every question necessary to dispose of all the outstanding matters in connection with the stage or stages for which the day or days have been allotted”. Apparently, for Speaker Sharma, saving the chief minister from continued embarrassment was more important than observance of the rules and propriety.
- In: Corruption | Crime | Education
- Leave a Comment
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has started disappointing the people with its investigation of the Vyapam scam. There is now an apprehension that it may only be cooperating with Special Task Force (STF) of Madhya Pradesh police in trying to save big-wigs involved in the scam.
Disposing of a number of petitions in the midst of a nation-wide outrage over several deaths suspected to be related to Vyapam scam, the Supreme Court had directed CBI in July last year to take over investigation of Vyapam scam cases from STF headed by an IPS officer of the rank of Additional Director General of Police. But the CBI investigation in the past eight months has not come up with anything to sustain people’s faith in the impartiality of the country’s premier investigation agency.
It was largely through his own initiative that former independent MLA Paras Saklecha got himself invited by the CBI team last week. Saklecha has made a significant contribution towards exposing the Vyapam scam by raising the matter in the Assembly and also by moving the court. However, he was a disappointed man after his three-hour meeting on January 29 with the CBI officers investigating the scam. He, though, did find out that STF had kept certain Vyapam scam cases, presumably involving big-wigs, with itself through a misrepresentation in the Supreme Court and this is in the knowledge of the CBI.
According to Saklecha, STF had registered 212 cases in connection with the Vyapam scam. But it mentioned only 185 cases when the matter was heard by Supreme Court and the apex court directed STF to hand over these cases to CBI immediately. The remaining 27 cases are still being investigated by STF. Saklecha says that CBI has expressed its inability to do anything regarding these 27 cases unless directed by the State/Central government or by a competent court.
The names of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, his wife Sadhna Singh Chouhan and his close family members and associates are being mentioned in connection with the Vyapam scam. An FIR was registered against present Governor Ram Naresh Yadav but it was quashed on a directive of the High Court because the Constitution does not permit registration of a criminal case against a serving Governor. The Governor’s son Shailesh was accused in another Vyapam scam-related FIR. Shailesh has since died. Laxmi Kant Sharma, who was Minister of Technical Education when the scam was virtually institutionalised is on bail, as are some top functionaries of Vyapam.
Vyapam is the acronym for Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal or Professional Examinations Board (PEB) in English. The modus operandi used in the scam was somewhat like this: the candidates for PMT (pre-medical test) who had worked hard and done well will be disqualified and other names (either on the recommendation of some important person or against payment of a heavy amount) will be shown as having qualified, and even put in merit list, for admission to medical colleges. After investigation, the STF has come across names of doctors working in hospitals who had not even appeared in PMT but had been declared qualified against payment of hefty sums. The young boys and girls who had worked hard for their tests were just at a loss to understand what went wrong.
Complaints of impersonation in tests, like in other examinations, have been made for decades. Occasionally there were reports of leakage of question papers also. But such irregularities were reported only sporadically and there was no evidence of an organised racket. Complaints of irregularities in an organised manner started after 2000 only. Between 2000 and 2012, as many as 55 FIRs were registered in various districts of the State, mostly in Indore and Bhopal. Some parties approached the courts also.
Following a hue and cry inside and outside the Assembly, chief minister Chouhan constituted STF of Madhya Pradesh police to look into the matter. The entire investigation was then handed over to STF which Chouhan probably thought would be easy to control, instead of keeping a track of what was going on where. The STF lost no time in seizing documents, hard disks and other relevant material from the Crime Branch of Indore police. It is said that no records were kept of handing over and taking over of the material from Crime Branch of Indore to the STF which gave rise to the suspicion about tampering with the evidence to save some high-ups.
It is over six months that Supreme Court entrusted to CBI the investigation of Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s notorious Vyapam scam which destroyed careers of thousands of young girls and boys. So far there is nothing in public knowledge to suggest if CBI is genuinely trying to bring culprits to book or following its past tradition of quietly burying politically sensitive cases such as Jhirniya arms recovery case or Malik Makbooja case.
The mysterious death of Delhi TV reporter Akshay Singh, followed by two more mysterious deaths in the next two days, had brought the murky goings-on in the investigation of Vyapam scam to a boiling point. The Supreme Court, which had earlier turned down the pleas for a CBI inquiry, not only allowed the fresh set of petitions but also showed its concern by directing the CBI to take charge of the investigation from the Special Task Force (STF) of Madhya Pradesh police within five days.
TV reporter Akshay Singh was interviewing Mehtab Singh Damor at his home in Meghnagar in Jhabua district on July 4 when he was said to have collapsed and died before he could be taken to the nearest health centre. Dean and Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Jabalpur Medical College Arun Sharma was found dead a day later in his hotel room in Delhi where he was on official business. On July 6, trainee police sub-inspector Anamika Kushwaha was found ‘drowned’ in a lake near Sagar even though she was a professional swimmer. All three were linked by a common thread: Vyapam scam.
On assignment to do stories for his organisation, Akshay Singh was said to have procured some crucial details about the death of Namrata Singh, a Vyapam-recruited MBBS student of Indore Medical College, whose body was found near railway tracks in Ujjain district in 2012. It was termed by the police as a case of suicide. Having spent a few days in and around Indore, Akshay had reached Meghnagar on July 4 to talk to the family members of Namrata Singh.
Dr Arun Sharma had stepped into the shoes of Dr D K Sakalley, Dean and Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Jabalpur Medical College, who had mysteriously died a year earlier. Dr Sakalley was in-charge of the in-house investigation team of the College to probe Vyapam scam and had identified 93 students who were said to have qualified through fraudulent means. He lived, along with his wife, in the official quarters inside the Medical College campus and was to retire at the end of 2014. In the morning of July 4, 2014, his wife went on her usual morning walk. By the time she returned, Dr Sakalley was engulfed in flames, not even in a position to talk. His unfinished work of identifying the Vyapam scam beneficiaries was taken over by his successor, Dr Arun Sharma.
The focus on Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and wife Sadhna Singh for their alleged involvement in the Vyapam scam was deflected when the Special Task Force (STF) registered an FIR in connection with the same scam against Governor Ram Naresh Yadav as it was perhaps for the first time that a criminal case was instituted against a serving Governor. The Governor’s son, Shailesh, was named as an accused in an FIR filed on February 18 for recommending 10 people for appointment as teachers in 2013. He died in Lucknow under mysterious circumstances on March 24. The Governor had meanwhile moved the State High Court which eventually quashed the FIR.
While few will vouchsafe for Governor Yadav’s commitment to propriety in the discharge of his duties, the manner in which the criminal case was instituted against him left a stinking trail behind it. The Congress in the State had been agitating, on and off, over Vyapam scam for quite some time. Of late the agitation was intensified by Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Satyadev Katare, with the help of PCC spokesperson K K Mishra, an intrepid digger of BJP government’s dark secrets. Towards the middle of last year, AICC general secretary and former chief minister Digvijaya Singh had also started taking active interest in the scam-related agitation against the BJP government.
The budget session of the Assembly was scheduled to begin on February 18. Two days before that, Digvijaya Singh threw a virtual bombshell. He submitted a sworn affidavit to the High Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) claiming that the excel sheets in the computers of the Vyapam had been tampered with to save chief minister Chouhan. Later he released a copy of his affidavit with the “tampered” excel sheets at a press conference. In a rare show of unity in the Madhya Pradesh Congress, Digvijaya Singh was accompanied at the press conference by former Union ministers Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia, PCC president Arun Yadav and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Satyadev Katare. Eminent advocate K T S Tulsi was also present. The affidavit says at the end: “vetted and settled by Sh. Kapil Sibal, Senior Advocate”.
According to Digvijaya Singh’s affidavit, the entry “CM” was deleted and replaced by other names 47 times in the computer to show that the illegalities were committed not on instructions of the chief minister but on the instructions of others. At a few places “CM” was replaced by “Uma Bharti” and at some other places by “Raj Bhavan”. He says: “as per law it is mandatory to maintain a record of ‘chain of custody’ of electronic evidence, which encapsulates the persons who handled the specimen/evidence at (the) time of seizure, what was collected, why it was collected, at what time it was handed over to next person for safe custody, to whom it was handed over, and for how long it remained in custody of various officials. The charge-sheet is silent on handling of records from local police, Indore, to Crime Branch, Indore and STF”.
Fresh ammunition
This gave fresh ammunition to the Congress which created a ruckus in the House as the budget session commenced and held demonstrations outside. The ruling party became much too uncomfortable. On February 24, the STF told the media that an FIR had been registered against the Governor on the basis of the statements made by some Vyapam officials who had been arrested by STF over a year earlier and were in judicial custody. The STF did not explain why it waited for over a year to act on the allegations made by the Vyapam officials in custody.
The FIR against the Governor created a sensation but it did not dampen the clamour against the chief minister. As Chouhan found it too embarrassing to face the incessant Opposition demand in the House for his resignation, Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma abruptly adjourned the budget session sine die on a motion of Legal Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra as the House assembled on February 26 (though it was scheduled to last till March 27). Before adjourning the House, the Speaker declared the budget passed – as well as the Appropriation Bill introduced, admitted and passed, in flagrant violation of the rules. Apparently, for Speaker Sharma, saving the chief minister from continued embarrassment was more important than observance of the rules and propriety.
If the purpose of all this was to divert attention from the alleged roles of Chouhan and his wife in the scam, the STF and Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma had succeeded, at least for the time being. The intensity of the Congress agitation petered out. The scam came into the focus with greater intensity a few months later with three Vyapam-related deaths within three days. The investigation was eventually handed over to CBI by Supreme Court.
Release of Laxmikant Sharma from jail may mean trouble for Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. As one of the main accused in the Vyapam scam, he was kept in jail for over 18 months without trial. Probably it was feared that if he was allowed to be freed on bail, he might say something that might not be in the interest of the chief minister and his family members. That was till the Chouhan-appointed Special Task Force (STF) was in charge of the scam investigation.
Vyapam or Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal (Professional Examinations Board – PEB) is entrusted with the task of conducting technical/professional examinations. Manipulations to recruit undeserving candidates in place of meritorious ones started in the Vyapam at some stage. It was during Laxmikant Sharma’s tenure as Minister of Technical Education that Vyapam scam was fully ‘institutionalised’. Sharma was then considered close to the chief minister.
Recruitment to some other departments was also brought under the control of Vyapam. The scam had taken epidemic proportions. Thousands of intelligent and hardworking young boys and girls were denied their due and the relatives of those in power or whoever could pay hefty sums were declared successful, instead.
As stray complaints were made to the police at different places, Chouhan constituted STF under a senior IPS officer ostensibly to investigate the scam but actually to ensure that Chouhan, his family members and some other top leaders were protected.
Top officials of Vyapam, along with many others, were arrested and kept in jail without trial. Laxmikant Sharma, too, was booked in seven scam-related cases and arrested in June last year.
The things changed after the CBI took over the scam investigation from the STF on orders of the Supreme Court. It is not that the officers in the CBI are less dishonest than those manning the STF. But the CBI working is being supervised by the Supreme Court and that gives some hope.
Sharma was the last of the important Vyapam scam accused to come out of jail on bail granted by the High Court on December 20. The only important BJP leader to hail his release was party’s national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya who also said that Sharma is innocent.
A former MP minister, Vijayvargiya had never been able reconcile to Chouhan’s being the chief minister. After coming out of jail, Sharma said that he would say in court whatever he has to say. What he is planning to say and what Chouhan would like him to say and how Vijayvargiya plays his politics might enormously affect the ruling party and government in the State.
Shivraj Singh Chouhan completed 10 years as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh on November 29. One of his greatest achievements is to completely dehumanize police officers. They have turned into pet dogs: they bite when he wants them to, they bark when he so desires and all the time they wag their tails before him.
In return, Chouhan gives them protection from the law, as he has given to top police officials who had openly meddled with the evidence in the Shehla Masood murder case. CBI, which is inquiring into Masood murder case, did not even question them.
When Chouhan became chief minister 10 years ago, he was not a member of the Assembly, but a member of Lok Sabha. He resigned from Lok Sabha and contested from Budhni constituency in Sehore district. Collector of Sehore and Returning Officer S K Mishra was removed by Election Commission a few days before polling for violating the law to help Chouhan. This was perhaps the first example when a Returning Officer was disgracefully removed near the polling day. As soon as the Election Commission’s Code of Conduct was over, Chouhan appointed Mishra Collector of Bhopal, one of the most coveted posts, and then Secretary to CM.
That was a message to IAS officers: You help me and I shall look after your interests. Many of the IAS officers offered, willingly and happily, their services in Chouhan’s endeavours to become the corruptest chief minister in the country, and have benefited themselves and their families also, in the process.
Chouhan’s dream of breaking all records of corruption in Madhya Pradesh by the time he completed ten years as chief minister would have remained unfulfilled without the solid help provided by Lokayukta Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar, who shamelessly subverted the laws and procedures to keep him out of harm’s way. Naolekar conveniently ignored the dividing line between truth and untruth while defending the questionable inclusion of his son, Sandeep Naolekar, into the entourage during the chief minister’s visit to China. Chouhan’s government went a step further and denied even knowing who Sandeep Naolekar’s father is.
Later, the chief minister got a boost from High Court Chief Justice A M Khanwilkar. With my meagre knowledge of Judiciary, I was considering former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan as the most corruption-friendly judge. But the manner in which Khanwilkar monitored/assisted Vyapam scam investigation (better to call it ‘cover-up’) by Special Task Force (STF) made me revise my opinion.
If you are the chief minister of a State and the Nature’s wrath destroys the crops and the farmers commit suicide, the illegally stored explosives burst killing over a hundred and injuring scores of others, the law and order situation takes a nosedive, the contract-hired teachers agitate and the health services are in a mess, more particularly in the rural areas, what would you do? Go on a foreign tour with your wife and some trusted bureaucrats in the name of soliciting foreign investments.
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan learnt this mantra soon after assuming office ten years ago. He has since been periodically visiting various countries, all the time claiming to woo investors. Even if one per cent of the assurances and promises he claimed to have received, the face of this BIMARU Madhya Pradesh would have by now been glowing with red hue.
Recently he returned from nine-day jaunt to Japan and South Korea with 23 investment promises. Not long ago he had been to Italy, the Netherlands and Germany at the head of a large brigade comprising (then) industries minister Kailash Vijayvargiya (who now has divined that actor Shah Rukh Khan’s body is in India but his soul is in Pakistan), a contingent of State government officials and a platoon of the State’s industrialists.
If, as the cliché goes, Chouhan’s wishes were horses, Madhya Pradesh would have by now a Rs 20,000-crore aviation city for repair and maintenance of the aircraft, a world university, a world class golf course, and would have become a pioneering State in power, textile, food processing, information technology and bio-fuel sectors with investments from Italy, the Netherlands and Germany alone. One of the first tasks of Chouhan on becoming the chief minister was to invite Britain’s biggest Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), with assets worth £8 billion (nearly Rs 75,000 crore), to begin its operations in Madhya Pradesh.
In February this year when the heat of the Vyapam scam had become a bit too much for Chouhan to endure (in spite of the illicit help provided by Assembly Speaker Sita Sharan Sharma), Chouhan had pushed off to the US with his wife and coterie. The information obtained by Ajay Dube through RTI application revealed that Chouhan had spent close to Rs 3 crore on his five-day US trip, nearly Rs 2 lakh on gifts alone.
Congress leader K K Mishra has alleged that Chouhan may also be using his frequent foreign trips to stash in foreign banks his ill-gotten money.
- In: Crime
- Leave a Comment
Two Madhya Pradesh officials have died under mysterious and somewhat similar circumstances, one in Uttar Pradesh and the other in Odisha. Both were said to have fallen from moving trains.
The body of retired Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Vijay Bahadur Singh was found on the railway track near Jharsuguda in Odisha on October 15. Singh was returning to Bhopal from Puri by the Puri-Jodhpur Express with his wife Nita Singh after attending a reunion of 1978 batch IFS officers. The police believed Singh had fallen from the moving train.
What makes the accident suspicious is that Singh was an observer for two recruitment tests in the Vyapam scam, the country’s biggest recruitment scam now being investigated by the CBI under supervision of the Supreme Court.
In 2009, the body of Madan Gopal Rusiya was found on the railway track near Agra in Uttar Pradesh. He was returning from Delhi to Bhopal by Hazrat Nizamuddin-Habibganj Express. Considered a wizard in revenue matters, Rusiya was CEO of Bhopal Development Authority (BDA) which had prepared a plan for development of new colonies near Bhopal and those whose land was going to be acquired included Jitendra Daga, a supporter of Sushma Swaraj and then BJP MLA from Huzur, one of the Bhopal constituencies. Daga had reportedly found the BDA terms for acquiring his land not to his liking and had been trying to get the terms altered. Rusiya was the biggest stumbling block.
Then Daga wanted Rusiya to talk to his lawyer in Delhi which the latter appeared to have flatly declined. Rusiya was said to have been prevailed upon by BDA chairman Surendra Nath Singh and virtually ordered to accompany Daga to Delhi.
The two flew to Delhi on September 10 morning and were scheduled to fly back the same evening. However, Daga was said to have told Rusiya in Delhi that the evening flight had been cancelled; the two, accordingly, boarded the AC coach of the Hazrat Nizamuddin-Habibganj Express the same night. Rusiya’s family members, who had gone to the Habibganj station to receive him, were shocked to see Rusiya’s bag and shoes without Rusiya. Daga had got down at Bhopal main station.
Rusiya’s death was investigated by the CBI which, as usual in sensitive cases, failed to unravel the mystery. Vijay Bahadur Singh’s death is being investigated.
ndsharma's blog 
House light construction site is one of the best site if anyone interested on construction j have to must visit…
[…] MP: police turn collaborators in crimes against women […]
Reblogged this on ndsharma's blog.
Reblogged this on ndsharma's blog.
Reblogged this on ndsharma's blog.