The total number of seats in the department were increased from 198 to 332 by a government notification number 198 in 2012 and RTI activist Ajay Dubey alleges that the motive behind the increase was to get candidates who had bribed the officials, jobs in the transport department.
The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday took over the investigation into the alleged alteration in optical mark recognition (OMR) sheets by employees of Vyapam in connection with Transport Constable Recruitment Test 2012. The development was, perhaps, the most awaited one for the petitioners in Vyapam scam case who believe that while frauds committed in the fields of medicine, engineering and police training can only drag in middle-rung culprits, the job scam involving the Madhya Pradesh transport department holds the key to implicate the chief minister Shivraj Singh as well as his wife Sadhna Singh.
The total number of seats in the department were increased from 198 to 332 by a government notification number 198 in 2012 and RTI activist Ajay Dubey alleges that the motive behind the increase was to get candidates who had bribed the officials, jobs in the transport department.
A week before the CBI took over the probe into the massive admission and recruitment scam, the transport department situated in Gwalior was gutted in fire allegedly caused due to a short circuit. Whistleblowers as well as opposition parties had suspected foul play and claimed that filed related to Vyapam were deliberately destroyed. "Jobs in transport department are more lucrative than other fields like medicine or engineering," Dubey told dna.
In June last year, an RTI query was filed by Kamal Maurya, additional IG, STF, seeking information on the transport scam. Two months later when an RTI query was filed by Dubey seeking details provided to STF official, the asked information was not provided.
According to him, chief secretary of Madhya Pradesh, Antony Disa (who then was additional secretary in transport department, Manish Shrivastav, transport secretary and Jagdish Devda should have been questioned by the STF. "We will request the honorable court to direct the agency to question all the accused," said Dubey who would be present in the next Vyapam hearing set to take place on July 24.
Sources in the CBI said that the probe agency is taking up every single complaint related to the Vyapam scam and it was a matter of time that all the cases would be taken over. Yet it remains to be seen whether the CBI will question the names mentioned by Dubey. In its cases registered in the transport scam it has only named ex-education minister Laxmikant Sharma and his OSD OP Shukla.
"There are 39 FIRs registered in the transport department alone. 35 people joined in as constables and four others as other officials. More importantly 17 people were selected during recruitment didn't even join after the STF probe," said KK Mishra, Congress spokesperson in MP, He claimed the 17 candidates got through the transport constable recruitment test by forging documents and they are all suspected to be from Sadhna's home district of Gondia in Maharashtra. "The STF was pressurised into neglecting the transport department because it leads to the doors of MP's chief minister," Mishra alleged.
The CBI officials, however, did add that no amount of political pressure will deter the agency from taking action. "CBI action will not discriminate," said Kanchan Prasad, spokesperson of the probe agency.
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