Vyapam scam is making headlines these days. It is about irregularities and corruption in the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB) or MP Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal, abbreviated in Hindi as Vyapam. Corrupt officials took money to compromise the examination and recruitment for several professional course including Pre-Engineering, Pre-Medical, MCA, Teaching etc.  Influential persons used their power to push for candidates, via several middlemen including mining baron and prime accused Sudhir Sharma, of their choice to be admitted to certain curses or recruited to certain posts. This article talks about 10,000 crore worth Vyapam Scam, it’s time line and did it happen due to flawed education system and  flawed societal values?

What is Vyapam Scam ?

Vyapam is Hindi shortform or acronym for Vyavsayik Pareeksha Mandal or the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB) which  is a self-financed and autonomous body incorporated by the State government responsible for conducting several entrance tests in the state. These entrance exams are used for recruitment to government jobs and for admissions to educational institutes in the state. Karnataka Public Service Commission (KPSC) Scam, Haryana Teachers Recruitment scam are similar unearthed scams of the recent past.

How much is the Vyapam scam worth?

More than 2.5 million young people have been affected by the scandal if only the recruitment and entrance tests conducted in 2012 and 2013 being probed by the STF are taken into account.

Several gangs operated with the connivance of PEB officials to manipulate sitting arrangements in examination halls and to fill optical mark recognition answer-sheets. While the rate started from Rs 15 lakh for the PMT, it was more than Rs 50 lakh for admission in PG (Medical). Education minister Laxmikant Sharma’s former officer on special duty (OSD) OP Shukla  was charged with taking Rs 85 lakh from suspended officials of the PEB for getting candidates selected. Ref: Hindustan Times Two years on: Over 40 deaths and 2,000 arrests in Vyapam scam.

The scam is said to be worth over Rs 10,000 crore with powerful people ranging from politicians, bureaucrats, to influential doctors and mining barons allegedly involved. For reference the other financial scams are given below.

Was the scam unearthed recently?How was it unearthed?

No. Report about scam has been on since 2000 but gathered steam after 2009. No one knows how long the Professional Examination Board of Madhya Pradesh or Vyapam scam has been going on. Nearly 50 people have died since 2009, when the Vyapam scam was first unearthed. Subsequent interrogations and arrests uncovered the involvement of several politicians, bureaucrats, MPPEB officials, racket leaders, middlemen, candidates and their parents in the scam.

Cases of irregularities in these entrance tests had been reported since the mid-1990s, and the first FIR was filed in 2000. However, until 2009, such cases were not thought to be part of an organized ring. The man who first blew the whistle on the scam is Dr Anand Rai, a doctor at the regional health and family welfare training centre in Indore.

His first complaint was on July 5, 2009 when papers of an entrance exam were leaked. His second complaint was on July 15, 2009 was about impersonation. Others who were better qualified were appearing for candidates in the exams. Like it happened in the movie Munnabhai MBBS.  

When major complaints surfaced in the pre-medical test (PMT) in 2009, the state government established a committee to investigate the matter. The committee released its report in 2011, and over a hundred people were arrested by the police. By June 2015, more than 2000 people had been arrested in connection with the scam. These included the state’s ex-education minister Laxmikant Sharma and over a hundred other politicians. In July 2015, the Supreme Court of India issued an order to transfer the case to Central Bureau of Investigation.

Mystery shrouds over a number of deaths in Vyapam scam

Ever since the investigation began, a number of people directly or indirectly connected to the scam, died under mysterious circumstances. Between 2009 and 2015, more than a dozen people who had allegedly acted as middlemen in the scam died under mysterious circumstances.

In January 2012, mutilated body of Namrata Damor, whose name appeared in the list of students who had cleared PMT-2010 using unfair means, found dead near a railway track in Ujjain district. In January 2015, Ramendra Singh Bhadoria, a medical student who was accused of using unfair means to clear PMT, found hanging at his home in Gwalior.

In April 2015, the body of Vijay Singh Patel, a pharmacist who was released on bail after being arrested in the case, was found in a lodge run by a BJP MLA. Another accused Narendra Singh Tomar, who was lodged in Indore jail, died on the way to hospital after he complained of chest pain in June 2015.

The mystery deepens with every new death reported even as the probe agencies struggle to unravel it.On Monday (July 6), the body of Anamika Sikarwar,who secured the post through an exam conducted by the MPPEB, was found in a lake adjacent to the Police Training Academy in Sagar district headquarters. Her death came a day after the death of Dr Arun Sharma, dean of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Medical College in Jabalpur, who was assisting the investigators in the probe. Sharma was found dead at a Delhi hotel on Sunday.The charred body of D K Sakalle – who was inquiring into admissions of candidates for whom proxies allegedly appeared in the Pre-Medical Test – was found at his residence in July 2014. In Jul 2015 TV journalist Akshay Singh died under mysterious circumstances soon after he had interviewed parents of a girl found dead after her name cropped up in the admission and recruitment scandal.

The most high-profile death was that of Shailesh Yadav, son of Madhya Pradesh governor and Congress leader Ram Naresh Yadav. Shailesh, who was an accused in the contractual teachers’ recruitment, was found dead at Governor’s official residence in Lucknow in March 2015

Who are whistle blowers of the Vyapam Scam?

•  The man who first blew the whistle on the scam is Dr Anand Rai, a doctor at the regional health and family welfare training centre in Indore.Dr Anand Rai.
• Forensic expert Prashant Pandey said he became a whistleblower in July 2014, when he realised the special task force was relying on documents that seemed to have been tampered with.
• Gwalior-based social activist Ashish Chaturvedi claims to have disclosed the involvement of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s relatives and seven others in the scam.

All whistleblowers claim that they fear for their lives.

Why did Vyapam Scam happen?

Why are people getting admission to various colleges by paying bribes or job aspirants who are tinkering with the recruitment tests. In 2011 the mad rush for a seat in a top Delhi University college forced at least 12 students to submit fake caste certificates to secure admission. As the result dates of various 12th board exams and various entrance exams approaches, the parents of the students who appeared in these exams are found contacting various brokers already for securing admissions into different engineering and medical colleges across India. This is especially true for students who are not very well off academically but their parents want to make them engineers or doctors in private institutions with their money.  In fact donations to medical colleges are much more expensive and may range from ten lakhs to fifty lakhs depending on the college. Fraudsters are in abundance in the admission industry.

Is this what Economist laureate, Amartya Sen means when he talks of growth: That having an uneducated and unhealthy working population is not only bad for human wellbeing but also detrimental to steady and sustained economic growth. Not a single industrialised nation in the world has got to where it has without investing in human capital, he says, not even an authoritarian state like China. Are people willing to be participate in such scams because of limited opportunities Is there is a Vyapam waiting to explode in almost every state?

TimeLine of Vyapam  Scam

• 2000-12: 55 cases of impersonation in exams filed across Madhya Pradesh
• Jul 7, 2013: Scam breaks ‘formally’ — Indore Crime Branch registers FIR after arresting 20 impersonators
• Jul 16, 2013: Jagdish Sagar arrested
• Aug 26, 2013: Special Task Force  (STF) takes over probe. Subsequent interrogations and arrests uncovered the involvement of several politicians, bureaucrats, MPPEB officials, racket leaders, middlemen, candidates and their parents in the scam.
• Oct 9, 2013: Results of 345 who took PMT three months earlier cancelled
• Dec 18, 2013: Ex-Higher Education Minister Laxmikant Sharma booked
• Dec 20, 2013: Uma Bharti, then BJP vice-president, demands CBI probe
• Jan 15, 2014: Shivraj Singh Chouhan tells Assembly that out of 1.47 lakh appointments made since 2007, 1,000 were found illegal; later revises figure to a little over 200. But no action has been initiated yet
• Nov 5, 2014: HC constitutes SIT
• Feb 16, 2014: Opposition Congress reveals information sourced from a “whistleblower”, alleging the STF was protecting Chouhan. Whistleblower, later identified as Prashant Pandey, an external cyber expert engaged by the STF, alleged that documents retrieved from the computer of Nitin Mohindra, Principal Analyst, Vyapam, had been tampered with, and 64 mentions of “CM” scrubbed out and replaced by other names
• Feb 20, 2015: Pandey moves Delhi High Court saying he “fears for his life”
• Apr 16, 2015: MP High Court gives ‘truth lab’ report and pen drive carrying retrieved original data to SIT, which asks STF to investigate the matter
• Apr 22, 2015: STF submits report on whistleblower’s allegation in sealed cover to MP High Court
• Apr 24, 2015: HC prima facie accepts STF report that says the material submitted by whistleblower is “fabricated and forged”
• Apr 26, 2015: Chouhan accuses Congress leader Digvijaya Singh of forgery
• Jun 29, 2015: SIT reports 23 deaths of accused and witnesses linked to the Vyapam scam. Congress cries foul; BJP says deaths due to natural causes, not linked to Vyapam
• Jul 7, 2015: After months of stonewalling, Chouhan relents, agrees to probe by the CBI.

TimeLine of Vyapam Scam from livemint.com in picture

TimeLine of Vyapam scam

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What do you think of Vyapam scam? Why did such scams happen? How to avoid such scams?