Ghosts of Vyapam

NK SINGH

Will the stigma never go away? The ghosts of Vyapam have come to haunt Madhya Pradesh Government once again. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has accused the government of serious “irregularities” in running Professional Examination Board (PEB), rechristened name of the disgraced organisation.

The CAG report, tabled in the just concluded session of state assembly, has accused the government of making key appointments in PEB on direct orders of ministers “in contravention of rules”. It alleges lack of financial accountability in the organisation.

The Board even refused to share reports of local fund audit with government. Other charges are “systematic subversion of rules”, bypassing established judicial and constitutional provisions in government recruitments and lack of integrity in its information technology system.

The biggest embarrassment for the government, however, is the revelation that it tried to avoid scrutiny by CAG, which is known as auditors to the nation. The CAG is mandated by the Constitution to scrutinise accounts involving public exchequer.

However, Madhya Pradesh Government stopped the central auditors from accessing Vyapam records in 2015 and 2016. It was done on the tenacious ground that Professional Examination Board is not a government organisation!

But, as the CAG points out, all key positions in PEB are filled by transferring government officers, it is financed by public exchequer and government funds are utilised at the instance of the government.

A well oiled racket

Ironically, that happened at a time when Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, a self-proclaimed “whistleblower” of Vyapam, was trying to expose the mammoth scam and his police was busy rounding up thousands of students who cheated at exams, their parents who bribed public servants, influential racketeers, corrupt officials and politicians running the well-oiled racket, including a minister in the BJP Government.

The scam in admissions to professional courses and for recruitments to government jobs was a huge embarrassment to Shivraj Government because it happened mostly during his tenure.

One thought that MP Government would have welcomed an impartial inquiry. CAG is supposed to be impartial and free of political biases. BJP had been singing its paeans when it was hauling UPA government over coals in 2G scam.

Vyapam is recognised as ‘mother of all scams’ in MP since Independence. An impartial forensic audit would have revealed what was so rotten within PEB that the racket flourished undetected for over a decade.

The government attempt to avoid scrutiny naturally raises suspicion that it has something to hide. Was it afraid that more skeletons will tumble out of its closets?

What, exactly, did the government try to hide? It was basically the fact that successive ministers had been running PEB as virtually their private fiefdom, appointing officers to key positions in utter disregard for rules and fixing their salaries and perks as personal largesse.

The CAG has named at least three ministers, including a Congress minister, for running Vyapam like a fiefdom. Its report establishes that the officers involved in the scam were handpicked by their political bosses! It establishes a link.

The CAG was scathing in its remarks. It accuses the government of “dual stand”. While, one the one hand, authorities claimed that PEB was not a government body, on the other they exercised “shadowy control” over it. It was a classic case of power without responsibility.This kind of “nebulous atmosphere” ultimately paved the way towards “severe erosion in credibility” of PEB exams.

What was worse, concludes the report, even after scam’s detection, MP Government “did not take any remedial measures” to prevent irregularities in future! It refused to act on red flag that Economic Offences Wing had raised.

A fertile ground for scam

The sad conclusion is that even now Vyapam is a fertile ground for scams. Allowing government to bypass established and time-honoured rules in recruitments to key positions creates an atmosphere in which ministers and their minions run the organisation as their private fiefdom, evading regulations even in conduct of examinations. That is what exactly happened in this case.

The CAG report has opened Pandora’s Box. The political reaction has been on predictable lines, with Congress demanding chief minister’s scalp and BJP defending the government.

However, BJP’s defence was pathetic. Its spokesperson launched an attack on the CAG, attributing motives and accusing the constitutional body of sensationalising the issue.

The ruling party must come out of the selective dementia from which it seems to be suffering. They have forgotten what happened to Congress when it tried to attack Vinod Rai and CAG for its report on 2G scam. Breaking the mirror that shows ugly warts is not going to help.

Powers That Be, my column in DB Post of 2 April 2017

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