Yet another ‘‘Laloo Raj’’ man has landed behind bars. Chairman of the Bihar Public Service Commission (BPSC) Ram Singhashan Singh was today arrested by the state vigilance department for gross irregularities in a departmental exam for promotion of government employees.Eight others, including the deputy secretary and a member of the Commission, were also arrested and remanded in judicial custody for 14 days. Early this month, the new Nitish Kumar government had ordered a vigilance probe into the alleged irregularities, after some victims filed a petition in the Patna High Court. Vigilance sleuths, on the directive of the HC, raided the BPSC office on December 8 and gathered answer sheets of the examination and incriminating documents.The matter relates to a departmental examination held in May 2003 for a total of 148 posts. Through the exam, non-gazetted government employees were to be promoted to the gazetted rank of Additional District Magistrate (ADM) and Deputy Collector. The result of the examination was declared in May this year. Alleging ‘‘gross irregularities’’, some of the candidates petitioned the High Court, which in turn directed the BPSC to submit the answersheets of the exam. BPSC declined to do so. Thereafter, on the directive of the court, the raids were conducted. According to sources in the vigilance department, ‘‘serious irregularities’’ were detected in the examination. Many employees who were not eligible were allowed to appear in the exam. Further, the results of the examination were manipulated by tampering with answersheets, evidence of which has been gathered by the vigilance department, the sources said.ADG, Vigilance, Neelmani said that the BPSC Chairman and the others were arrested on the basis of evidence gathered by the department against them. ‘‘We have enough evidence to prove the involvement of those arrested today,’’ said Neelmani.6 The arrested BPSC Chairman is said to be close to the previous RJD regime. He was appointed more than a year back by the Rabri Devi government. Although RJD leaders refused to go on record, they alleged that the arrest was an act of political vendetta. ‘‘The BPSC Chairman has been arrested on the day the President is scheduled to reach the state. The new government wants to prove that it is cracking down on corruption,’’ said a senior leader of the RJD arguing that it was wrong for the vigilance department to arrest a man sitting on a Constitutional post. This is not the first instance of the BPSC Chairman being arrested. During the RJD regime, CBI had arrested the then BPSC Chairman Laxmi Rai in connection with an engineering entrance examination. At the time, results of the examination were said to have been manipulated and answers sheets tampered with.
