The ‘Vyapam’ scam, which until now has remained somewhat of a mystery due to a number of suspicious deaths and the strong bond between politicians, bureaucrats and outsiders – its division is now known as the ‘Staff Selection Board’.
The Vyapam scam was unearthed in 2013 and since then the BJP-led government Shivraj Singh Chouhan has changed its name twice. The name of the department, Vyapam (Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal), which is responsible for conducting examinations and recruiting state officials, was recently changed in January this year.
The state government renamed it the Professional Examination Board (PEB) for the first time in 2015 and again as Karmchaari Chayan Mandal (Staff Selection Board) in February this year.
Sources told IANS that since the scam was unearthed during the BJP government in 2013, it was renamed in 2015 in an effort to repair at least some of the reputational damage. And it was changed again in February 2022 with the same intention.
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In addition to the name change, the department that used to be under the Technical Education Department of the Government of Madhya Pradesh has now been transferred to the General Administration Department.
In February this year, when the scam-smeared sign was renamed for the second time, the opposition jokingly took to the government of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, saying: “The name change has been done to wipe out the blemish left by Vyapam during his reign. from the BJP.”
The body then known as Vyapam was at the epicenter of a massive scam that involved rigging admission tests for professional courses and committing fraud in the recruitment of employees and officers for various departments of the state government.
The scam was first investigated by state police, but the case was later handed over to the CBI on Supreme Court orders. A series of suicides and deaths of the accused made the case even more sinister.
The scam-infected Vyapam, now called PEB, “is responsible for conducting recruitment tests for the selection of Class III and IV employees in various departments of the state government. Previously, it also conducted admission tests for technical and medical courses in the state, but as those investigations are now being conducted at the entire India level, its role has dwindled,” said an official associated with the department.
More importantly, although the department has been renamed twice in the past seven years, questions about its credibility and how it functions have continued to surface. Recently, a new allegation was leveled against the department and interestingly, the allegations were made by the same whistleblower – Anand Rai – who was one of those who exposed the scam in 2013.
Rai and a congress leader KK Mishra had claimed a few months ago that the exam papers of the Teacher Eligibility Test (exam administered by Vyapam) had been leaked. The duo accused the OSD of the Chief Minister, Laxman Singh Markam, of it.
The duo had shared an alleged screenshot of Markam’s cell phone (as they claimed) on social media and had demanded an investigation into the matter. However, that claim only remained a political controversy and FIRs were registered against Rai and Mishra. Later, Rai, an employee of the state government, was suspended from his post due to some departmental issues. And this problem has gone away.
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