Above: Rahul Gandhi at an election rally in Chitrakoot, MP; both the BJP and the Congress have hurled charges at each other in the Vyapam case/Photo: UNI
A CBI judge asking the police to file an FIR against Congress leaders, four days after he had allowed a petition by one of them, shows how unfair the system in Madhya Pradesh is ahead of polls
~By Rakesh Dixit in Bhopal
As Madhya Pradesh inches closer to assembly polls, the state government is trying all it can to woo voters and cling to power. The ruling BJP and opposition Congress seem to be vying with each other to prove themselves more Hindu by espousing issues related to the cow and Lord Rama. While Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced the setting up of a cow ministry, the Congress promised to open cow shelters in all 23,000 villages. The Congress is even ready to embark on the mythical route Lord Rama is believed to have traversed during his 14-year exile. The tracing of this route, known as Ram-Van-Gaman-Path, was originally the BJP’s project and was announced by the chief minister in 2007, but was later abandoned.
Real issues such as unemployment, corruption and farmers’ distress are on the back-burner. Vyapam, India’s biggest job-cum-recruitment swindle, was almost forgotten until a court intervention brought it up bang in the centre of electioneering in Madhya Pradesh.
The special CBI court has asked the Bhopal police to file FIRs against Congress leaders Digvijaya Singh, Kamal Nath and Jyotiraditya Scindia on a complaint alleging that they presented false information in court regarding the Vyapam case, to malign the chief minister’s image.
While this scam has thrown up many surprises since it first surfaced in July 2013, the latest twist is the most baffling so far. On September 22, special CBI court judge Suresh Singh allowed Congress leader Digvijaya Singh to record a statement regarding his petition seeking Chouhan’s trial in one of the Vyapam related cases. Strangely, four days later, the same judge found the same petition dubious enough to order the Bhopal police to register an FIR against Congress leaders and Vyapam whistleblower Prashant Pandey, on charges of forgery on a BJP leader’s complaint.
Complainant Santosh Sharma, president of BJP’s Bhopal district legal cell, submitted in court that Congress leaders made false allegations against the chief minister regarding the Vyapam investigation “with the intention to influence evidence and take political mileage”.
Suresh Singh’s extraordinary flip-flop has made Chouhan’s alleged complicity in the scam a potentially explosive issue in a state that is soon going to the polls. The scam had been gradually fading from collective memory, thanks largely to the CBI’s lackadaisical investigation in the last three years. But the judge’s two contradictory orders, issued within the span of a week, have revived focus on it.
The counsel for the petitioner, Shreyraj Saxena, said that investigation into the scam was first conducted under the supervision of the MP High Court, which formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to monitor the probe. After it was handed over to the CBI, the apex court was monitoring the probe. “Yet, the Congress leaders have been accusing STF, SIT and CBI of biased investigation and are challenging the validity of their findings,” Saxena argued.
Suresh Singh ordered the Bhopal police to immediately send a copy of the FIR to the Court. He said that the Court could not investigate a matter which was the job of the police, and hence, an FIR should be registered under Sections 465, 468, 471, 474 and 120-B of the IPC. He directed the police to complete its investigation and submit the final report on November 13.
The judge’s order followed Digvijaya’s private complaint alleging that investigative agencies had not acted against the chief minister in the Vyapam scam. He had filed the petition on September 17 and the Court permitted him to record his statement on September 22. Senior lawyers from the Congress, Kapil Sibal and Vivek Tankha, had appeared in the Court while Digvijaya’s statement was being recorded.
The complaint was filed under Section 200 of the CrPC. Nearly 27,000 pages of documents as evidence were submitted along with the complaint. Sibal has accused Chouhan of being at the root of the corruption in this case. The chief minister has also been accused of directing the police to tamper with the electronic evidence against him in one of the Vyapam cases.
It was on July 13, 2013 that the Indore police arrested a dozen youth who were to sit as proxies for candidates appearing in the pre-medical test (PMT). The arrests opened a can of worms. The interrogation led to arrests of top executives of the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board or Vyavasayik Pariksha Mandal (Vyapam). It transpired that all the tests for admission in medical colleges and recruitments for state government departments were rigged. Over 2,000 arrests took place and many suspects were found absconding. The arrested included students, parents, bureaucrats, education mafia, politicians, middlemen and employees of Vyapam.
Sibal alleged that the Indore police had seized the hard disk of one of the main accused, Nitin Mahindra, on July 17, 2013, four days after the first arrests in the scam were made, and asked cyber expert Prashant Pandey to download the details in the disk. Mahindra was Vyapam’s chief systems analyst. He used to meticulously keep a record of the candidates for various tests conducted by the board with the names of those who had recommended the candidates. These were stored in his computer.
The Indore police drafted Pandey to crack the computer hardware and retrieve the record. Pandey not only did what he was asked to do but allegedly went a step further—he copied the excel sheets, presumably without the knowledge of the Indore police. The copy allegedly had the chief minister’s name entered as “CM” 48 times as the one who recommended candidates for contact teacher-grade II test. Digvijaya has alleged that the Indore police tampered with the original excel sheet to replace the “CM” entries with that of senior BJP leader Uma Bharti, and at some places, “Raj Bhawan”. Top Indore police officials, including then IG Vipin Maheshwari and Additional SP Crime Dilip Soni, had a role to play in the deletion of names, according to the petition filed by Digvijaya.
Pandey later fell out with the police and was arrested. After getting bail, he fled to Delhi and obtained a stay on his further arrest from the Delhi High Court. He also met Digvijaya and handed the copy of the excel sheets he had retrieved from Mahindra’s computer. Digvijaya used the evidence given to him to full advantage and revealed many details at press conferences. However, on October 31, 2017, the CBI sought court permission to prosecute both Digvijaya and Pandey while giving a clean chit to the chief minister.
After this, the BJP has become more aggressive while the Congress has been on the defensive. However, just two months ahead of the assembly elections, the Congress has got an opportunity to corner the chief minister.
Will it affect the BJP’s prospects in the coming polls?