The Vyapam Scam

The Vyapam scam pertains to manipulation in the selection process for government jobs involving politicians, senior officials and businessmen in the state of Madhya pradesh conducted by the MP Professional Examination Board.

MPPEB (Madhya Pradesh professional examination board) is popularly known as VYAPAM ( vyavasayik pariksha mandal) is a governing body who has the responsibility of conducting several entrance exams in the state

These are entrances which when passed provide employment to people giving them government jobs & for admission to state educational institutes

The scam involves a number of undeserving candidates who bribed the politicians and MPPEB officials though middle men to get a high rank in these entrances.

One of the main accused in the scam is Sudhir Sharma. According to the income tax assessment he had been providing payoffs and facilities such as flight tickets to many politicians and bureaucrats between 2010 and 2013.

The people on the receiving end included RSS functionary Suresh soni, a former Madhya Pradesh BJP chief Prabhat Jha and his songs along with many civil servants.

The report which was made in 2013 showed that the businessman Sudhir Sharma had arranged for a flight ticket in 2010 for BJP general secretary who is now a union minister.

Sudhir turned out to be one of the main component of the VYAPAM scam and was later jailed  along with former MP education minister Laxmikant Sharma.

It all started in the 90’s when certain glitches in these entrances were reported. In he year 2000, the first FIR was filed, but it wasn’t until 2009 these cases were thought to be a part of some organized ring.

All the cards of the scam were overturned in 2013 and the whole thing came to surface when 20 people who tried to impersonate candidates for PMT 2009 were arrested by the Indore police.

When these 20 people were interrogated, the name of Jagdish Sagar came up, who was the leader of an organization involved in the scam. He was arrested.

Recently two more people have died in strange circumstances in the last three days. One was the Dean of a Jabalpur Medical College Dr Arun Sharma and the other is Aaj Tak journalist Akshay Singh, who was covering the scam.These two deaths have further attracted people’s attention towards the scam.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan defended his government for not initiating a probe by the Central Bureau Investigation by saying the High Court had ruled against a probe by the agency.

HOW WAS IT EXECUTED ?

The people involved in the scam carried out their operation in these ways:

1. This trick involved the admit card of the candidate. All the details on the card belonged to the candidate except the photo. The candidate’ photo was exchanged with the photo of the person who gave the exam instead of the candidate and after the exam the candidate’s photo was put back.
2. This involved the seating arrangement of the examination hall. The candidates were seated such that the person sitting next to them either let them copy all the answers or at the end of the exam sheets were exchanged.
3. In the third possible way, the candidate was just expected to come to the examination hall and do nothing. The OMR sheets given to them were to remain empty and after the exam the candidates were given desired marks.

 

Initial reports suggested that about eight accused had died in strange circumstances by May 2015. However, a report by the high court-appointed special investigation team (SIT) probing the scam revealed that another 32 people, all aged between 25 and 30, have died under suspicious circumstances since the probe began in 2012.

Not much is known about the deaths of the other accused except that most of them happened Chambal area covering Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Whistleblowers:

Three people who were barely similar to each other came together in the fight for justice against this scam. Namely Prashant Pandey, Dr. Anand Rai & Ashish Chaturvedi unknown to one another in the initial days of the scam helped a lot in revealing the important parts of the scam even at the risk of their lives.

One of them was threatened to be involved in 40 different cases if he spoke anything against the political figure involved.

They had been continuously receiving life threats when they had committed to getting justice. According to one of them he had asked for police protection but was only given protection for 8 hours so basically his life was in God’s hands.

But in spite of all this they have come together to expose the scam so that the system can change it’s ways .