Opinion Chouhan govt is failing MPPEB test

Madhya Pradesh has seen several scams, but none as blatant in scope and damaging in impact as the still-unfolding examination and recruitment scam involving officials of the state professional exam board, middlemen, bureaucrats, politicians and organised syndicates. Several top officials of the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, whose mandate to conduct exams such as the pre-medical test was expanded a few years ago to include recruitment tests not carried out by the state services commission, are behind bars and so are middlemen, students, parents, and some beneficiaries of fraudulent recruitment.

Over the past few years, students who struggled to clear even the PMT, in some cases even class XII, have got into government medical colleges with bribes, and at the cost of deserving students. This year alone, about 100 seats were filled that way. The STF, which took over from the crime branch in Indore, where the PMT scam came to light last July, began on a promising note, arresting MPPEB officials irrespective of political links and taking parents into custody arguing that students couldn’t have raised lakhs without their knowledge. But when it came to the big names such as former technical education minister Laxmikant Sharma and mining baron Sudhir Sharma, and IAS and IPS officers whose relatives had received money or got into medical colleges, the STF floundered. The names of both Sharmas figured in the FIR but the agency let them go after questioning them at times of their choosing. No bureaucrat has been arrested either.

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The BJP’s Uma Bharti has called it bigger than Bihar’s fodder scam, a description the Congress has latched on to. But when it emerged that Bharti’s name was mentioned in a court document, the DGP called on her to apologise, putting a question mark on the investigation. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has turned down the demand for a CBI inquiry and appears unfazed by the Congress’s allegation that CMO officials are involved. Incidentally, even a Congress leader is on the run.

The CM would be well served in ordering a CBI probe because the scam involves elements in UP. It’s true the scam had no adverse fallout for the BJP in the assembly elections, but that’s no justification not to have a central probe when the state agency’s role has come under a cloud.

Milind is a senior assistant editor based in Bhopal