Shivraj 's Uma Bharti moment !

Spooked by Vyapam, BJP May Leave Shivraj Singh Chouhan to Fend for Himself

BY RAKESH DIXIT ON 07/07/2015 • ( LEAVE A COMMENT )

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Two double deaths in close succession, a flurry of petitions before the apex court and mounting public outrage has made the Madhya Pradesh chief minister—once talked about as a prime ministerial candidate—a political liability

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan addresses a press conference in connection with the death of the people linked to the Vyapam scam in Bhopal on Sunday. PTI Photo

Bhopal: That Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan – cornered by the spreading tentacles of the Vyapam scam – is staring at the worst political crisis of his career is to state the obvious. What is not apparent though is that the embattled CM is facing a severe crisis of credibility within the Bharatiya Janata Party as well.

Those familiar with the BJP’s inner circles say that defending the chief minister has become increasingly harder for the party since the last week of May when relentless media coverage about Vyapam-related deaths – 32 official, 46 unofficial and counting  – unleashed a wave of nationwide outrage.

The deaths of two of the accused – Narendra Singh Tomar, a veterinary surgeon, in Indore jail and Dr Rajendra Arya in Gwalior hospital on June 28 – in close succession, had rendered the Shivraj government hopelessly defensive.

Then came the shocking news of two more near-simultaneous deaths: that of Aaj Tak news channel reporter Akshay Singh in Meghnagar of Jhabua district on July 4, followed the next day by the death of Dr Arun Sharma, the dean of a Jabalpur medical college who was involved in the investigation into the scam. DK Sakalle, Sharma’s predecessor at the college who was also involved in the investigation, too had been found dead in similarly suspicious circumstances, exactly a year ago.

Public anger that erupted following these deaths seems to have been the last straw for an already embarrassed BJP leadership, which has now more or less left Chouhan to fend for himself. Senior leaders like Rajnath Singh and Arun Jaitley, who so far had refrained from intervening in the Vyapam affair despite the media’s damning disclosures, were forced to publicly call upon Shivraj to ensure a “thorough and fair” probe into the journalist’s death.

Unsure of the party’s full backing, the chief minister, who would earlier depute the task of defending the government to his ministers, hurriedly called a press conference at his residence to defend himself. This was first time that Chouhan faced the media exclusively on the Vyapam scam since it surfaced in July 2013.

Between a rock and a hard place

His statements at the press meet were uncharacteristically defensive: “I did not commit a crime by ordering a probe (into the Vyapam scam)… What I did, I did in pure and pious spirit in the interest of the state… My intention behind ordering a probe was to cleanse the mess in the examination and recruitment system that I inherited from the Congress… No other state government in India’s history ever ordered such a comprehensive probe into irregularities to get at the truth with such promptness” and so on.

Meanwhile, the Congress is expected to mount pressure on the chief minister, who is also facing allegations of direct complicity in the scam. Chouhan has been accused of tampering with the original Excel file retrieved from the computer of Nitin Mahindra, chief systems analyst at the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examinations Board, known by its Hindi acronym, Vyapam. The Excel file contained the names of all the ‘recommenders’ of illegitimate candidates cleared through Vyapam examinations. According to former Madhya Pradesh chief minister and AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh, the CM’s name was present in the spreadsheet as a recommender 48 times, which he says Chouhan later substituted with those of Union minister Uma Bharti and ‘Raj Bhawan’.

Although the Madhya Pradesh High Court dismissed Digvijay Singh’s ‘proof’, contained in a pen drive, as a forgery and gave a clean chit to Chouhan in April this year, the risk of an independent agency  revisiting the evidence proof still haunts the chief minister. At his press conference, he ruled out the possibility of the state government agreeing to a CBI probe since there was already a probe underway that was being monitored by the high court, adding that such a move would amount to “insulting” India’s judicial system.

Chouhan has two good reasons to dread a CBI probe: first, he would lose control over the probe and second, this would put him at the mercy of his old rival in the BJP, Narendra Modi.

The STF, which consists of officers drawn from state police personnel, can hardly go against the chief minister, no matter how closely the high court might monitor the investigation. This also means that those currently incarcerated, no matter how high up, are unlikely to dare implicating him. Among the 1900-odd accused in jail are a former minister, his former officer on special duty (OSD), a mining baron, a former OSD to the governor, bureaucrats, businessmen and middlemen. Some of them have been known to have worked with the chief minister closely in the past, and likely to be privy to matters Chouhan would not want exposed.

A chequered record

Chouhan is just four months short of surpassing his predecessor Digvijay Singh’s 10-year record as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh. But the raging controversy on Vyapam has cast a shadow on his cherished goal of being the longest serving CM of the state.

He had faced a similar crisis in 2007, when a petition filed in a Bhopal court claimed that his wife Sadhna Singh had bought four dumpers worth Rs 2 crore and leased them to a cement factory in Rewa. The state Lokayukta, which probed what came to be known as the ‘dumper scam’, eventually exonerated the Chouhan couple of all charges.

The chief minister was embroiled in another controversy in October 2012 when income tax sleuths raided the offices and residences of billionaire builder-contractor Dilip Suryavanshi across Madhya Pradesh. The Congress targeted Chouhan for his closeness with Suryavanshi, whose wealth had grown exponentially under the CM’s regime.

In June this year, Chouhan was once again in the spotlight, after the Congress party accused him of securing a manganese mine lease allotment in Balaghat district’s Paunia village for a company owned by his wife, in violation of rules.

Under Modi’s thumb

The chief minister weathered all such political storms in the past with aplomb, also because he had the unstinted blessing of BJP patriarch LK Advani. Chouhan is a prominent member of the Advani-Sushma Swaraj camp in the BJP, which once rivalled Modi’s own.

In the run up to the Lok Sabha 2014 elections, the media was abuzz with speculation that the Advani camp would pit Shivraj as a potential competitor to Modi. Chouhan, however, had assiduously scotched such rumours at the time.

Nevertheless, the vibes between Modi and Chouhan are far from warm. Modi trusts Chouhan’s rival in Madhya Pradesh politics, Kailash Vijayvargiya more. This is evident in Vijayvargiya’s elevation as BJP national general secretary, though he continues as a powerful minister in the Shivraj cabinet. Vijayvargiya recently broke ranks with his colleagues to suggest that an SIT probe into the Vyapam deaths was a possibility, contradicting home minister Babulal Gaur, who has consistently claimed the deaths were natural.

Under the circumstances, a probe by the CBI, which reports to the Centre, would make Chouhan completely vulnerable to his one-time political rival, the Prime Minister.

So far, the chief minister has been lucky as the Madhya Pradesh high court rejected demands such as those from Digvijaya Singh in November last year for a CBI probe into the Vyapam scam. The court, instead, set up a special investigation team to monitor the probe on its behalf. The Supreme Court too upheld the lower court’s verdict, much to the consternation of the Congress.

As of this week, a bunch of fresh petitions seeking a CBI probe into the scam are again before the Supreme Court. Three have been filed on behalf of the original whistleblowers – Prashant Pandey, Ashish Chaturvedi and Anand Rai. A fourth has been filed on behalf of Digvijaya Singh by senior lawyer Vivek Tankha, while a fifth has been filed on behalf of Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas.

The petitioners are optimistic that this time the Supreme Court will accede to their plea in the light of a whole host of fresh disclosures including unnatural deaths of the accused. Tankha says the scam has become more complex, more widespread and extremely sinister since time the Supreme Court had expressed satisfaction over the high court-monitored probe.

Digvijaya Singh, however, says that the high court probe has miserably failed. He also alleges that the STF’s investigators have been extorting money from some of the accused to let them off the hook. Besides, he avers, the STF sorely lacks the requisite wherewithal, especially the technical capability, to unravel the multilayered scam. Only the CBI has the competence and adequate manpower to take the case to its logical conclusion, he feels.

If Chouhan survives the coming petition wars, the party might rally behind him once again. Until then, however,, the BJP leadership is understood to be of the view that it is wiser to let Shivraj fend for himself.

Vyapam: How a Munnabhai-style Exam Scam Turned Into a Macabre Thriller

BY RAKESH DIXIT ON 01/07/2015

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With 24 dead and counting, Vyapam is one of the most complex, multi-layered scandals affecting public life in India. It is also the least understood. The Wire brings you up to speed.

Congress activists burning an effigy of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Bhopal on Monday, They are demanding for a CBI investigation into the Vyapam or Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board scam. PTI Photo

Bhopal: The key facts are so disturbing as to be without parallel: a scam that covered higher education admissions and government recruitments in one of India’s largest states for several years, with cash worth hundreds of crores of rupees changing hands; 24 officially confirmed ‘unnatural deaths’ of accused persons and suspects including senior officials and the state Governor’s son. Unofficial estimates of deaths vary from 44 to 156, depending on who is making the claim; for every dead suspect, a 100 are either in custody (over 1800 arrests) or on the run (some 600); nearly 200 suspects have filed petitions requesting protection as they fear for their life; bigwigs whose names have been dragged into the spotlight so far include the state Governor, Chief Minister, a national spokesperson of the ruling BJP, and two of the senior most RSS leaders.

No wonder that the Professional Examination Board (PEB) or Vyapam, short for Vyavasik Pariksha Mandal, scam that came to light in July 2013 – one of the most blatant and extensive rigging exercises of its kind ever uncovered in India – is fast acquiring the shades of a macabre crime thriller.

The ‘unnatural’ deaths

In its status report to the Madhya Pradesh High Court on June 26, the Special Task Force (STF) probing the scam stated that 23 accused have died ‘unnatural deaths’. Two days later, one more accused, Narendra Singh Tomar, died mysteriously at Indore Central jail, making it 24 suspicious deaths from a pool of 2,400. In response, the High Court has stated that the decision about investigating these deaths will be taken in consultation with the Special Investigation Team (SIT) headed by a former High Court judge, formed by the court to monitor the probe.

It’s useful to note that 24 unnatural deaths is the official figure; the unofficial figure goes up to 44 and could be even higher. Leader of opposition Satyadeo Katare of the Congress claims that as many as 156 persons connected with the scam have died so far. “These 156 dead include accused and suspects, their family members, whistleblowers and witnesses,” he says. However, he has not been able to substantiate his claims or furnish a list of those he claims are dead.

A majority of those who died are from the Chambal region straddling Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Most of the dead were in the age group of 25-30. They were either students, who had fraudulently secured admission to medical colleges after paying hefty sums to touts of the PEB’s bosses, or job aspirants who benefited from the manipulation of recruitment tests.

For quite some time, only four unnatural deaths relating to the scam had been reported in the media. The most high-profile of these was that of Shailesh Yadav, son of Madhya Pradesh Governor Ram Naresh Yadav. The Governor was also named as an accused in a recruitment rigging matter in February this year but the High Court gave him relief a month later, saying that he enjoys constitutional immunity as long as he is in office.

File photo of MP Governor Ram Naresh Yadav and Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan. PTI photo.

Home minister Babulal Gaur has rejected the demand for an independent probe into the unexplained deaths linked to the scam. “It is for the High Court, which is monitoring the probe, to take a call in this matter. I cannot do anything about the deaths which, in my view were natural,” he told The Wire.

Meanwhile, Digvijaya Singh, AICC general secretary and a former chief minister of the state, says that the SIT has still to act on the information provided to it by him about Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s alleged involvement in the scam.“The STF is untrustworthy as it works under the direct control of the state government and the SIT cannot be relied upon because its chief admits to having no control over the probe,” says Digvijaya Singh, who moved the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Unearthing the scam

The chronology of deaths in the case is significant. They started occurring two months ago, when STF sleuths speeded up their investigation to meet the Supreme Court deadline of June 15 for filing charge sheets in all the cases related to the scam. The sleuths discovered that a large number of the accused during interrogations pleaded innocence, putting the blame on ‘others’ who were found to be dead. This was read as an obvious ploy to mislead the probe.

The STF reported this trick to the SIT chairman, Justice (retired) Chandresh Bhushan, who is supervising the probe on the order of the MP High Court. Justice Bhushan, in turn, asked the STF to compile a list of the dead. In its previous status report to the High Court on May 27, 2015, the STF had reported 32 deaths but, after further investigation, the number was brought down to 23.

The two whistleblowers who blew the lid off the scam – Dr Anand Rai of Indore and Ashish Chaturvedi of Gwalior – say that several suspicious deaths relating to the scam have gone unreported in the media. For instance, the death of another accused in Gwalior on June 28 – Dr Rajendra Arya, accused of helping two students clear the pre-medical tests (PMTs) conducted by the PEB in 2007 and 2008 – is not being considered unnatural as he had been suffering a kidney ailment for over a year. Arya had been out on bail for year.

Among those who died in unexplained circumstances were three others: In January 2012, the body of Indore medical college student Namrata Damor, 23, was recovered on the railway tracks in Ujjain. Despite the post mortem report confirming she had been murdered, no inquiry was initiated into her death. Ujjain police dismissed the case as suicide. Damor had passed the pre-medical test in 2009, allegedly with help of a racketeer who worked for scam kingpin Jagdish Sagar.

On July 4, 2014, Jabalpur Medical College Dean DK Sakalle, 58, allegedly committed suicide at his official residence. He was engaged in the scrutiny of bogus candidates admitted to the college between 2008 and 2013. Home Minister Babulal Gaur had assured the state assembly that Sakalle’s alleged self-immolation would be investigated but his statement was not followed up by any action.

File photo of Narendra Singh Tomar, an accused in the high-profile MPPEB (Vyapam) scam, has died under mysterious circumstances in an Indore jail. PTI Photo

On March 25 this year, the Governor’s son, Shailesh (50), was found dead at his father’s residence in Mall Avenue area of Lucknow. Shailesh was accused of taking money to help 10 candidates from Bhind district clear the examination for the post of contractual teachers conducted by the board. The exchange of money allegedly took place in Raj Bhavan, the Governor’s official Bhopal residence.

Then again, on April 28, pharmacist Vijay Singh Patel, 35, was found dead in a hotel owned by a Bharatiya Janata Party MLA in Kanker (Chhattisgarh). Vijay was an accused in three cases relating to the scam and was likely to be booked in three more cases. He went missing a day before a scheduled hearing at a Bhopal court on April 17. Ten days later, his body surfaced.

However, the death of Tomar, the latest accused to die, is not going uncontested. A government veterinary surgeon, Tomar was facing charges of having arranged proxies to write the PMT for two registered candidates in 2009. Tomar’s younger brother Vikram, a government school teacher at Makdone Village in Ujjain District, has alleged that his brother was murdered inside Indore prison, where he had been lodged since February 2015, to cover up the crimes committed by others. Saying that the jail authorities informed him at 2.30 am that his brother was in a critical condition when he had died at 12.30 am, Vikram is asking for a CBI probe into his brother’s death.

Munnabhai, without the humour

The Vyapam scam surfaced in July 2013 when eight impersonators were arrested as they attempted to take a pre-medical test as proxies for registered candidates in Indore. These arrests were made possible by a tip-off from whistleblower Anand Rai. During the interrogations of the arrested individuals, the name of Dr Jagdish Sagar as the supposed kingpin of the racket surfaced.

Madhya Pradesh police knew about an admission racket for years as several medical colleges in the state had prepared lists of suspected ‘Munnabhais’ – students who had someone fill in for them by proxy, as depicted in the Bollywood film Munnabhai MBBS. But the police had nothing definite to go by. Sagar’s arrest in July, however, opened a can of worms, leading to the arrest of PEB examination controller Pankaj Trivedi in September 2013.

Exposing the enormity of the racket, Pankaj revealed that it was not confined to manipulation of the PMT exam alone; it also involved rigging the dozen-odd recruitment exams conducted by the board. This was done mostly by manipulating the computer system, allegedly the handiwork of chief system analyst Nitin Mahindra and his subordinates.

The PEB officials allegedly colluded with middlemen, racketeers, politicians and bureaucrats to subvert the functioning of the exam and recruitment system in three ways:

• Impersonation: Brilliant students would write the exam for aspirants, with the examination board officers replacing their photographs with that of the original candidate after the exam.  The student would end up passing an exam which he or she never appeared for with flying colours, and the impersonators would be paid a hefty amount as fee.
• Engine and bogie system: a person – the ‘engine’ — would be strategically placed between two ‘bogies’ or aspiring candidates so that both could copy from his or her answer sheet. The examiners would be usually bribed to fix the seating arrangements.
• OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) sheets:  Candidates would be asked to leave their answer sheets blank for which they would be randomly given high percentages after the exam. Board officials would then file an RTI demanding to view those exact answer sheets. They would then fill in the answers in the OMR booklet according to the marks the candidates had already been given. This would be done so that if someone were to ever check those answer sheets, there would not be any loopholes that could give them away.

Another consummate fraud, this one mounted by college owners, was to get bright ‘scorers’ to appear for the tests. On clearing the test they would withdraw on the last date so that the promoters could sell the now vacant seats for a hefty price.

Exams as gold mine

The Professional Examination Board or Vyapam is the acronym of a self-financed autonomous board under the directorate of technical education of the MP government. Set up in 1970 to conduct entrance tests for the MBBS course, its ambit has grown over the years.

The Bhopal building of Vyapam. Credit: vyapam.nic.in

The proliferation of private medical and engineering colleges from 2004 onwards paved the way for the PEB to start conducting examinations for 50 percent of their seats. With the commercialisation of professional education in 2002, insiders obligingly played the role of Trojans, to breach the system from within for a price.

In 2007, the BJP government mandated the PEB to conduct all recruitment tests for an entire spectrum of government jobs – from constables to nurses, teachers, police sub-inspectors and all non-gazetted jobs. With this, the scope for graft also multiplied. Such was the deluge of candidates seeking favours in various exams that the scamsters maintained excel sheets to be on the ball.

Recruitment to 40 departments is controlled by the board.  Opportunities to manipulate the system for filling government departments with bogus candidates are immense. The recruitment of contract teachers and police personnel proved particularly more lucrative because the number of aspirants in those two areas was quite high. No wonder that most of the accused, including bureaucrats arrested for recruitment fraud, were largely linked to these two tests.

Earlier, these recruitments took place through the respective departments. Corrupt officials in the departments would strike deals with racketeers to get chosen candidates cleared. The clandestine operations would run smoothly, barring occasional rumblings from the candidates who thought they had been cheated of a job. But such complaints were too few and far between to warrant serious media attention.

The clockwork nature of the admission-recruitment racket emboldened the nexus to tweak the system more audaciously. For instance, when the ‘recruitment mafia’ realised that though they could help candidates pass the theory test for police recruitments but could not help them clear the physical test, they got fitness norms diluted. In some cases they even managed to get the fitness test abolished. The bureaucracy was only too willing to help the mafia – for the right price.

An all-star cast

Vyapam scam accused Sudhir Sharma

With the racket growing into almost an industry, a top power broker in Madhya Pradesh, Sudhir Sharma, decided to take control of the PEB’s corrupt empire. Sharma’s rise during the 10 years of the BJP regime had been stupendous. He was a teacher in an RSS-run Saraswati Shishu Mandir. When his close friend, Laxmikant Sharma became mining minister, Sudhir quit his job and joined the mining business. Within years, he emerged as a top notch mining baron.

Leveraging his friendship with Laxmikant Sharma, Sudhir got an associate of his, Pankaj Trivedi appointed as examination controller in the PEB. Trivedi was a lecturer in an Indore college, so his elevation in the PEB raised many eyebrows in bureaucratic circles. One of Pankaj’s brothers, Piyush Trivedi, is the vice chancellor of the state’s only technical university. Their cousin, Sudhanshu Trivedi, is BJP’s national spokesperson, and has been accused of being one of the behind-the-scenes players in the scam.

As has been reported by the media, Sudhir Sharma was also close to RSS leaders such as lateKS Sudarshan and Suresh Soni. Both the RSS stalwarts are said to have recommended candidates in job tests, although this has since been denied by the STF.

According to investigators, Pankaj Trivedi turned out to be more adept at manipulating the system than Sudhir had ever imagined. He allegedly managed to suborn all the key functionaries in the board, notably chief system analyst Nitin Mahindra, assistant programmer C K Mishra, Ajay Sen and Santosh Gupta.

For years, Pankaj Trivedi and company got away with cheating thousands of deserving medical students and job aspirants, primarily because they were secure in the belief that Laxmikant Sharma, who was also technical education minister and former key aide to chief minister Chouhan, was protecting them. Although the PEB is supposed to be a self-financed, autonomous body with a senior IAS officer as chairman, it was Trivedi and company who called the shots.

By the time, the scam was unearthed in July 2013, the mafia had managed to admit over 1,000 undeserving students in the state’s medical colleges. All those admissions have since been revoked. In addition, several hundred had entered government jobs after paying a hefty cut to middlemen, who in turn shared the spoils with PEB members. Their fate now hangs in the balance.

Given the ever widening ramifications of the PEB scam, the CM announced the formation of a special task force (STF) for investigation. The Congress alleged that the STF was formed in a hurry to preclude a CBI probe as the CM was well aware of the involvement of BJP leaders, including himself.

However, the STF’s prompt actions managed to convince many about its earnestness and, as a result, the Congress failed to make the scam a potent election plank in the assembly polls held in November 2013. The BJP romped home with a bigger majority than before.

Once the election was over, the embarrassment for the new government began as Pankaj Trivedi started naming influential individuals who had benefited at the expense of thousands of deserving candidates for jobs and admissions. Pankaj named his mentors, and technical education minister Laxmikant Sharma and mining baron Sudhir Sharma as key recommenders for the fake appointments and admissions racket. Laxmikant Sharma, who had lost the 2013 elections and Sudhir Sharma, who went into hiding, were eventually arrested. They continue to be in jail.

With the arrest of these two key figures, the scam unravelled at breakneck speed. By December 2013, the STF had identified 129 accused. These included Dhanraj Yadav, officer on special duty (OSD) to the governor, IAS officer KK Jain, deputy commissioner RK Mishra, DIG RK Shivhare, IG Sonali Mishra’s brother Bharat Mishra, two state police officers from Gwalior, OSD to Laxmikant Sharma, OP Shukla, and OSD to the chief minister Prem Prasad. Some of them had paid money to touts for securing admission of their wards. Others had acted as touts themselves. Later, over a dozen more IAS, IPS and state service officers were nabbed. All of them are behind bars.

The following months saw the STF arresting suspects dozen-a-day. Medicos would be picked up from their homes and brought to the STF office for interrogation. Some would be accompanied by their parents. Poignant stories appeared in the media as to how some parents had obtained loans after pawning assets to pay the middlemen. Photographs of boys and girls being herded into police stations evoked pity towards the accused and anger against the system which brought them to this sorry pass. Although the arrests did not cease, their pace definitely slackened after public sentiment turned hostile against the government.

“It is a pity that poor students suffer the ignominy of arrests while the real culprits are still out of the law’s reach,” says leader of opposition Satyadeo Katare.

Political ramifications

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan admitted during the inaugural session of the assembly after the formation of the new government in January last year that the STF had detected 1000 bogus appointments made possible through the nexus of the education mafia and PEB officials.

He, however, refused to accede to the Congress’s demand for a CBI probe. An infuriated Congress hit the streets in protest.  For months, the scam rocked the state. But the stir could not be sustained.

The near-decimation of the Congress in the Lok Sabha election in May last year had a profound bearing on the STF probe.  A confident BJP, which won 27 out of 29 Lok Sabha seats in the state, maintained that the STF was doing a fine job.

The Congress was too demoralised to revive the stir against the government. In November 2014, the MP High Court rejected Digvijaya Singh’s plea for a CBI probe, with the Chief Justice AM Khanwilkar ordering the formation of the SIT to monitor the probe instead.

Although for a while it seemed that the Congress had given up the fight, on February 16 this year, senior Congress leaders Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Digvijaya Singh, PCC chief Arun Yadav and leader of opposition Katare addressed a joint press conference on the issue in Bhopal. They accused Chouhan of having deleted the original spreadsheet bearing his name in 40 places as a recommender for candidates. They alleged that the CM inserted union minister Uma Bharti and ‘Raj Bhawan’ wherever his own name figured in the Excel sheet.

The spreadsheet was allegedly procured from the hard disk of the then PEB system analyst, Nitin Mahindra, who is now in jail.  Mahindra would methodically maintain the names of all those who had recommended admissions and appointments for various tests through the PEB in spreadsheets. The High Court, however, rejected the information submitted by Digvijaya Singh as forged and gave a clean chit to the CM.

In fact, when Mahindra mentioned ‘Raj Bhawan’, he meant some one close to the Governor – either his OSD Dhanraj Yadav or son Shailesh Yadav. Where Ram Naresh Yadav himself had recommended a candidate, the Excel sheet maintained by the system analyst would mention him as ‘Governor’.

Digvijaya Singh maintains that the proof he gave is incontrovertible and that he had procured the excel sheet from whistleblower Prashant Pandey, who had once collaborated with the STF to crack PEB system analyst Nitin Mahindra’s computer data. Pandey photocopied the data and passed it on to the Congress leader.

When the police learnt about this, Pandey was arrested. He, however, fled to New Delhi after being released on bail in August 2014. Since then he is living under the protection of Delhi police on the order of the Delhi High Court.

Ball now in Supreme Court

The Madhya Pradesh government has dismissed reports of more than 40 unnatural deaths as “totally baseless”, but nationwide outrage over the scam-related deaths has revived hopes for a Supreme Court intervention in the matter.

On Tuesday, Digvijaya Singh moved the Supreme Court for a CBI probe into the scam. Senior Supreme Court lawyer Vivek Tankha too has announced that he will take up the case on behalf of the dead. “This is a most horrifying scandal where so many suspects have died mysteriously. I will try to ensure they get justice,” says Tankha, who had earlier unsuccessfully pleaded Digvijaya Singh’s case for a CBI probe in the MP high court and the Supreme Court.

In a scandal that is inextricably tied with the political fortunes of the ruling party, it remains to be seen how far the case goes or how long it takes to bring it to its conclusion. Considering the nature of the revelations so far, however, it is clear that this genie is not going back into the bottle meekly.

Rakesh Dixit is a Bhopal-based journalist with more than 35 years experience in the field

French president and Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta

Rakesh Dixit

There are enough indications now that Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta PP Naolekar is going to enjoy a tenure that only French President was privileged to enjoy till 2000—seven years  

President of the French Republic term was reduced from seven to five years and; the first election to a shorter term was held in 2002. President Chirac was first elected in 1995 and again in 2002. Justice Naolekar is all set to emulate last seven-year term record of French president Chirac.

Last week the state government indicated that Justice (rtd) P P Naolekar would continue as Lokayukta aftercompletion of his six-year term on June 28. The government told the office of accountant general (AG) to continue his emoluments and privileges beyond the month of June as well.

The state government had amended the MP Lokayukta and Up Lokayukta Act, 1981 in August last year to enable the incumbent to continue in office even on completion of his term.

Now that the government has brazenly obliged the Lokayukta, public-spirited individuals and NGOs are expecting the Ombudsman to be ashamed enough of the munificence to demit the office. That does not seem to be happening though.

Chorus building up

A chorus is building up emerging against the likely continuation of justice (retired) PP Naolekar as Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta.

A former minister, a retired district judge, a retired IPS officer are among those who have asked Naolekar to not accept an extension of service after his tenure of six years, and demit office gracefully.

Congress leader and former minister Dr Govind Singh has written a letter to Naolekar, stating that nowhere in the country there is provision for extension of tenure after retirement, and hence he should leave his office on the day he completes six years in the post. 

Retired district judge RS Baghel has advised Naolekar to maintain highest standards of personal as well as institutional integrity and don't succumb to any allurement (extension of tenure) from the state government.

Ajay Dubey, a member of Transparency International, has also urged the Lokayukta to retire on June 28.  Dubey has asked him to retire on the due day and recommend to the government to initiate the process of appointing the next lokayukta.

Retired IPS officer and former director general of special police establishment,  Lokayukta, Arun Gurtoo said : "In these days of increasing corruption and abuse of authority, any visible loss of impartiality or dignity of this organisation shall shake the confidence of the people in the state government as well as in the ability of the organisation to deliver."

Senior Congress leader Satyadev Katare, who had asked the chief minister to initiate process for appointment of new Lokayukta, said, “I condemn the decision. It’s not justified and I express strong disapproval of the decision.”

The office of the lokayukta has come under scrutiny in recent times. While in Gujarat, the then chief minister Narendra Modi remained dead against appointing a Lokayukta all through his 13-year tenure, in Madhya Pradesh (MP), Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan seems to be enamored with his lokayukta, Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar.

In fact, so happy is the cabinet with Naolekar that on August 13, it extended his term by a year, a good 10 months before his retirement. Even the deputy lokayukta will continue in his post after retirement if no successor is appointed, subject to a maximum period of one year. The term of the lokayukta is six years in MP, unlike five years in other states. With another year’s extension, Naolekar will stay in office till the age of 72. So what makes this head of the anti-graft institution so special?

SUSPICIOUS OPPOSITION

While state parliamentary affairs minister Narottam Mishra defended the amendment in Section 5 of the MP Lokayukta and deputy Lokayukta Act-1981, saying it was done to ensure continuity in the posts, the Congress is suspicious about the motive and timing of the cabinet decision.

The leader of the opposition, Satyadev Katare, attributes Chouhan’s move to “ambition to bring all constitutional bodies under his control”. “Lokayukta PP Naolekar is not retiring immediately as his term ends in June 2015. What was the compulsion to increase the tenure when the government is in a majority and can take such a decision anytime?” Katare asks, wondering if the government has no trust in judges, who are scheduled to retire soon and may become eligible for the post.

Lokayukta PP Naolekar has not pursued corruption cases in true earnestness

Upset that the ruling BJP government in the state did not seek his prior consent before taking the decision, he registered his protest in a letter to governor Ram Naresh Yadav. Incidentally, the 1981 Act makes it mandatory for the government to consult the leader of the opposition, chief minister and chief justice of the high court at the time of the lokayukta’s appointment.

This gives credence to the view that there is more to this issue than meets the eye. The alleged bonhomie between Chouhan and Naolekar has been hotly debated in the state assembly ever since Naolekar, a retired Supreme Court judge, assumed the lokayukta office in June 2009. Last year, fiery Congress MLA Kalpana Parulekar even stormed into the assembly carrying a placard, which alleged that Naolekar was an RSS agent.

TAINTED LOKAYUKTA?

What has made the opposition see red is the lokayukta’s alleged kid-gloves treatment towards tainted ministers and bureaucrats for years. The high court even sent a notice to the lokayukta on September 11 based on a PIL, asking him to submit a report by October 6, explaining on what grounds bureaucrats and ministers were let off from alleged corruption charges against them.
Petitioner P Najpandey claimed that 11 ministers in Chouhan’s cabinet, apart from at least 90 civil servants, were under the lokayukta’s scanner. Some of the complaints were pending for seven or more years, but there was no forward movement as far as prosecution goes.

Incidentally, the lokayukta had disclosed ahead of the assembly election in MP last year that it had closed the probe in eight cases of alleged irregularities against former and present ministers, in reply to RTI activist Ajay Dubey’s petition. However, the loka-yukta maintained that the probes were closed for want of solid proof against the accused. “If we get a complaint backed by solid proof and evidence, we will not spare time in raiding or catching a powerful and influential person, be it a powerful politician,” Naolekar had claimed recently to an English magazine.

MISUSING POSITION

But the opposition is not impressed with his defense. His clean chit to Chouhan and his wife, Sadhna Singh, in the dumper case four years ago still rankles the Congress leadership. In this case, Chouhan was accused of misusing his official position to rent out dumper trucks to an industrial house as a quid pro quo for allotting a mining lease. Taking cognizance of the lokayukta’s closure report, a special court had then given a clean chit to the CM.

So forceful was the lokayukta’s clean chit that special judge RPS Chauhan was moved to observe: “That Shivraj Singh Chouhan should indulge in a business of petty corruption is not prima facie acceptable because he, as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, could siphon off hundreds of crores of rupees without directly bringing his relatives in the picture. Even otherwise, as soon as he came to know of this business (of petty corruption), he closed it down, which only shows his (good) character.”

“Lokayukta PP Naolekar is not retiring immediately as his term ends in June 2015. What was the compulsion… when the  government is in a majority and can take such a decision anytime?” 
—Satyadev Katare, leader of the opposition, MP Assembly

Around this time, allegations also flew thick and fast about the government’s benevolence towards Siddharth Naolekar, son of the lokayukta. Siddharth is an Indore-based industrialist and considered close to powerful minister Kailash Vijayvargiya. Last year, Siddharth’s name figured in an FIR along with five others in a case of alleged cheating by a real estate firm. The MP High Court, however, stayed the operation on the orders of Indore Junior Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court.

Another allegation against the lokayukta was that he was not adequately proactive in compelling the government to give assent for prosecution of the officers facing probes. More than 100 such requests by the loka-yukta, including around 40 made in 2013, are pending with the state, despite the apex court’s direction for clearing such requests in three months. For example, the state government nod is awaited for prosecuting Indore health officer, Dr Rajesh Kothari, even a year after multiple lokayukta raids unearthed disproportionate assets to the tune of `55 crore from his house.

BLAME IT ON ACT

Worse, Section 197 of the code of criminal procedure, introduced by the state government, mandates sanction before prosecution of public servants for criminal offences. So, the anti-corruption watchdog has to wait for sanctions before prosecution of corrupt babus. Naolekar blames the unresponsiveness of the state government to the lack of teeth in the present lokayukta act. “There is a need to make some amendments in the… Act to give more teeth to it. The Act is about two decades old and needs to be amended,” he argues.

Around a year after assuming office, the lokayukta had remarked that corruption of lower rung officials like patwaris was more dangerous than of those in high places. His institution seems to have endorsed this statement in earnest as it has often trapped petty officials. According to official sources, in the last five years, as many as 146 cases related to disproportionate assets (DA) were registered, involving proceeds worth `303 crore between June 29, 2009 and April 30, 2014. Further, the lokayukta has registered 891 trap cases, in which government officials were allegedly found demanding and receiving bribe from people during the same period. Between February 1982 and March 2013, the lokayukta registered 704 cases and seized properties worth Rs. 417.27 crore, allegedly acquired through corrupt means. MP punished 4,280 gazetted and non-gazetted officials during the period on the recommendations of the lokayukta for their alleged involvement in corruption.

The same alacrity should be shown against those in high places too.

How police defamed a dead journalist

How Madhya Pradesh police tried to defame a dead journalist and a ‘fearless crusader’

Days after Sandeep Kothari’s burnt body was discovered, the police raked up the old cases against him. That, however, was only half the truth.

Rakesh Dixit  · Today · 03:30 pm

Photo Credit: PEN International

Sandeep Kothari’s sister Sandhya is distraught. When he was alive the journalist faced a rash of criminal cases over 10 years which included charges of extortion and sexual assault. Even after his death the Madhya Pradesh police hasn’t let up the campaign to sully him – it publicly branded him a serial offender. “I pleaded with him so many times – leave journalism or you will die,” said Sandhya.

Kothari, 40, was found dead near a railway track in the Butibori forest of Wardha district in Maharashtra on June 20. He was abducted the previous day from Katangi tehsil in Madhya Pradesh’s Balaghat district, driven to Maharashtra and then incinerated. The police has arrested two men – Vishal Tandi and Brijesh Duhrawal – and are searching for the main accused, Rakesh Narswani, a manganese mining kingpin, who is on the run.

Days after the body’s discovery, the Madhya Pradesh police raked up the old charges against Kothari.

“Kothari was a hawker who used to write dispatches for Nayi Duniya [a reputed multi-edition daily of Madhya Pradesh] till 2012,” Balghat additional superintendent of police Neeraj Soni told media-persons. “There are several cases of blackmailing, extortion, rape against him. He was also externed from the district. The arrested and the absconder were in fact his associates in many cases and their friendship had turned into rivalry. The three had allegedly implicated him in a rape case in which he was discharged. The enmity could be due to the case.”

In Katangi police station, in Balaghat district, Sandeep Kothari is history-sheeter number 15.

Police-mafia nexus

However, the account painted by Neeraj Soni is incomplete. Of the 25 cases registered against him in the past decade, Kothari was convicted in one – and even there he was acquitted by a higher court. In another case he was let off after paying a fine of Rs 500. In four cases where the police claimed to have no information about the verdicts, the judgements were in Kothari’s favour.

Furthermore, Kothari was not a former journalist. After he left Nayi Duniya, he began editing a small daily from Katangi. At both newspapers, he assiduously wrote reports on the local mining mafia and chit fund companies, exposing their crimes, said Kothari’s brother Rahul.

Soni’s account is also at variance with the memories of Kothari’s family and, significantly, the testimonies of his colleagues in the police force.

Kothari was no friend of those now accused of his murder. Vishal Tandi ran a chit fund company, and Brijesh Duhrawal was a realtor-builder. The suspect on the run, Rakesh Narswani, was a notorious mining kingpin in Katangi. Since Kothari exposed their illegal trades, Rahul maintained, they closed ranks to browbeat the journalist by filing a series of cases against him.

Some top police officers too remember Kothari standing up to the police-mafia nexus.

Possible murder motives

According to Rahul, the three men accused of killing his brother were directly or indirectly involved in all the cases registered against him. Kothari was acquitted in 21 cases. Of the remaining four, two were registered recently and two were pending in the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

The complainant in the three rape cases against Kothari was the same, said Rahul. In one of these Kothari was discharged. No charge-sheet was filed in the second for lack of evidence. And the third was dismissed when the complainant confessed in court last December that she falsely implicated the scribe at the behest of the three murder accused. After his acquittal, Kothari slapped defamation notices on June 10 against the three men and 24 others who provided false depositions.

Since then the three men had been pressuring Kothari for compromise, Rahul said. His refusal to cave in is suspected to be a probable cause for the murder. Another possible motive, according to Balaghat sub-divisional officer (police) JN Markam, could be the enmity over a case of illegal mining that Kothari had recently filed in a local court against the three men. The police suspect the journalist was perhaps murdered because he refused to withdraw the matter.

The Balaghat police has mentioned these possible motives in a report to the Bhopal headquarters.

An officer, who has read that Balaghat police report, said the journalist paid for his writings with his life. He requested anonymity for fear of possible action against the Katangi police, and refused to discuss the case further "as a special investigation team has been formed to probe the murder”.

Fighting over minerals

Sitting on the border of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, Balaghat district is famous for its rich deposits of precious minerals, particularly manganese and bauxite. These minerals have spawned illegal mining whose allure often causes bitter rivalry among mafiosi for dominance in the predominantly tribal area.

The district is also riddled with Naxalite offshoots known as Dalams who extort commission from mining contractors. A large number of policemen are alleged to be part of the extortion racket that is also said to involve politicians. Local journalists are prone to be co-opted into the racket either out of fear of the nexus or inducements. Sandeep Kothari was an honourable exception, said people who knew him well.

Even Neeraj Soni, who was quick to dismiss the journalist as a blackmailer, conceded that Kothari would lodge complaints against the mining mafia with painstaking documentation.

The main opposition party in Madhya Pradesh, Congress, is all set to take up the killing in the monsoon session of the assembly, slated to start in July. Meanwhile, state home minister Babulal Gaur has promised that the special investigation team set up to probe the murder will be fair and comprehensive.

The SIT probe was finally announced after Kothari’s family members refused to trust an investigation by the Katangi police. They accepted Kothari’s body for the last rites on June 22, following an assurance from the police that an independent inquiry will be conducted under deputy superintendent of police JN Markam.

The family stresses the police’s role in the journalist’s relentless harassment which ended with his murder. Kothari’s father Prakash blames the police for conniving with the rich and powerful to get rid of his son. “You don’t know how a father feels when his young son passes away.”