Dear Readers,
You all must be hearing about a word "VYAPAM" on all the news channels and might be seeing it on the cover pages of the newspapers as well. You don't need to wonder at all. You might get this topic in the upcoming descriptive exam like SBI PO Mains. Being recently in news, it is one hot topic for discussion. It's seriousness got elevated once the unseen pages of VYAPAM got turned by special Task Force constituted by Court Authority. Now the first question that might arise in your mind is "What is Vyapam?"
The answer is, the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPBP), the government body responsible for conducting several entrance tests in the State, is popularly known as ‘Vyapam’ (Hindi acronym for Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal). These entrance tests are used for recruitment to government jobs and admissions to educational institutes in the State.
The scam, which has been in the news recently, is an admission and recruitment scam involving politicians, senior government officials, business-persons and others in Madhya Pradesh. In it, undeserving candidates bribed politicians and MPPEB officials, through middlemen, to get high ranks in the entrance tests or secure jobs. Many of those who discovered these sordid facts — whistleblowers and journalists responsible for unearthing the details — have died in a spate of suspicious incidents. The three main whistleblowers — social activists Dr Anand Rai and Ashish Chaturvedi, and IT consultant Prashant Pandey — have been receiving death threats.
According to varied reports from whistleblowers, the following tricks were used by those involved in the scam:
i. All the information of the candidate remained the same, except the photograph. The candidate’s photograph was replaced by that of the impersonator and after the exam, it was changed back to the original. Obviously, the impersonators were brilliant students and they received huge sums to keep their mouths shut.
ii. A person was strategically made to sit in front of the candidate in question. The person let them copy from his sheet or exchanged the sheet with them at the end of the exam.
iii. The candidates in question were asked to leave their answer sheets blank and were given high marks in the exam. Or they were supplied with solved OMR sheets before they took the exam.
While complaints against irregularities came trickling in from the mid-2000s, the Vyapam issue turned murkier from 2007-08 onwards. However, it was only in 2013 that the lid was blown.
The Opposition claims that over 77 lakh candidates have paid bribes to secure seats and jobs. Here’s how it all began:
2007: This was the year when the scent of a scam was sniffed. The MP Local Fund Audit office found financial and administrative irregularities in Vyapam.
2009: Activist and doctor from Indore Anand Rai filed a public interest litigation (PIL) with the MP High Court, alleging foul play in the recruitments and admissions.
2011: Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan set up an enquiry committee to look into the matter.
2013: Anand Rai made startling revelations that led to a series of arrests. On the intervening night of July 6 and 7, the police arrested 20 persons who were to impersonate candidates scheduled to appear on July 7 for the MPPEB. On July 12-13, the kingpin of the racket, Jagdish Sagar, was arrested. A list confiscated from him revealed the names of 317 candidates. MPPEB’s exam controller, Pankaj Trivedi, who vouched for students who had fraudulently ‘answered’ the exam, sending letters to institution heads to accept them, was later arrested and removed from his post. A Special Task Force of the MP Police began handling the investigation. The Congress requested the High Court to conduct a CBI probe.
2014: The MP High Court rejected the demand for a CBI Inquiry by the Congress and other parties. In April, 27, students from MGM Institute of Health Sciences were expelled for fraudulently clearing the medical test back in 2012.
2015: Accused, witnesses and investigators have been dropping like flies this year. So far, around 1,900 are in jail. According to latest developments, though the State Government of Madhya Pradesh wanted to hand over investigation to the CBI, the MP High Court quashed the request, stating it will not take a decision till the Supreme Court weighs in on the matter.
Now after all of this, the matter is still under investigation and the final decision is still to be taken. It has to go a long way and many pages of this book is still unturned. We have to wait and watch untill some concrete steps is to be taken by the authority. In this country where unemployment is one of the burning issues, such kind of incident will not only demotivate the young generation but will adversely affect the output.
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