Lights, Chimera

‘MP gajab hai, sabse ajab hai (MP is amazing, different from all)’. So went the lyrics of a TV spot by the MP Tourism Development Corporation. The song’s back again on people’s lips as the governor and CM of the state get singed with all­e­gations of involvement in a recruitment scam.

Around 1,800 people, including an ips officer and many top doctors, are in pri­son as accused in what is called the Vyapam scam, derived from the Hindi acronym for the MP Professional Exa­mination Board. Another 300 are yet to be arrested, the special task force (STF) has told the high court. It is, however, the FIR lodged against Governor Ram Naresh Yadav that is creating a stir. Yadav has been booked under Section 420 of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act, the charge being that he recommen­ded names of three candidates for rec­ruitment as forest guards and charged Rs 4 lakh each from them. The recruitment examination was conducted by the Vyavasayik Pariksha Mandal.

As the Governor enjoys constitutional immunity from arrest and prosecution, the STF will have to wait till he either relinquishes his post or is sacked by the Centre. Though Yadav has not reacted to the latest development, he had refused to quit even when his son Shailesh was charged with involvement in another Vyapam racket—the recruitment of contractual teachers. His OSD Dhanraj Yadav, who has been with him since his brief tenure as UP CM, is already in jail.

Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan too has come under a cloud. AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh has submitted a formal complaint to the Special Investi­gation Team appointed by the high court to oversee the probe and headed by a former HC judge, saying that an Excel sheet extracted from the hard disk of Vyapam official Nitin Mahindra’s computer was fudged, replacing the word ‘CM’ with ‘Raj Bhavan’ and ‘Uma Bha­ratiji’ as recommenders, to save Shivraj.

The HC had constituted the sit while rejecting a petition by Digvijay Singh seeking a CBI probe into the scam. At that time, the UPA was in power at the Centre and the Shivraj government was hesitant to hand over the probe to an agency under the Union government. Now, with the BJP in power in Delhi, Shivraj, some say, must be ruing his decision.

Vyapam has been conducting exams for recruitment in non-gazetted posts in 53 government departments. So far, it has organised 81 such exams, in which more than one crore candidates have appeared and four lakh have been recruited. The Vyapam saga began in July 2013 when the Crime Bra­nch of Indore police discovered irregula­rities in the Pre-Medical Test Vyapam conducted. Some months later, state Congress spokesperson K.K. Mishra alleged that 19 candidates from Gondia, the home town of Chouhan’s wife Sadhna Singh, were selected as transport constables in an exam by Vyapam. However, nothing came out of the charge and the CM slapped a defamation case on Mishra.

After a brief lull, the scam was back again centrestage when former Vyapam examination controller Pankaj Trivedi revealed that two top RSS leaders were directly involved in the scam and had got their men recruited in government jobs. In a written statement, Trivedi named former RSS chief, the late K.S. Sudarshan and Sarkaryavah Suresh Soni. However, the STF later denied their involvement.

Meanwhile, an Indore-based ‘ethical hacker’—going by the name of Mr X—helped the STF extract deleted files from the computers of Vyapam officials and retrieve call data records. He created a sensation when he claimed that he had installed hidden cameras and voice recording devices in the STF office. Dr Anand Rai, the first to blow the lid off the massive irregularities in Vyapam, while talking to Outlook, said he fears for his life; his family too is not safe. He moved Delhi HC seeking security.

By K.S. Shaini in Bhopal