Headlines
Vyapam scam: No audit of exam process in 45 years
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By Sidhartha Dutta New Delhi, July 18
Ever since the Madhya
Pradesh Professional Examination Board was formed in 1970, the state
government has never conducted an audit of its confidential account, an
RTI query has revealed.
The confidential account of the board
deals with the details of the entire examination process - how the
examination is conducted, who will set the question papers, where these
will be printed, their transportation costs and which experts will be
recruited for the evaluating the OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) sheets,
as also the payments made to the question paper setters, experts and the
printing press.
Only the chairman of the Board and the
controller of the examination are privy to the details of the
confidential account of the Board.
The RTI reply, given to
whistleblower Ajay Dubey, shows correspondence between the deputy
director of the Local Fund Audit and the commissioner, revealing that
there is no mention of the audit of the confidential account of the
board in their rulebook.
"The board conducts about 40-50
examinations every year leading to expenditure of crores of rupees.
Although the audit of external activities of the board was done, the
confidential account of the board was never audited since its inception.
We have requested the state government to conduct an audit of the
confidential account," Dubey told IANS.
Another RTI reply
received from the Directorate of Local Fund Audit revealed that there
were gross irregularities in 2008 in maintaining the records of the OMR
sheets in the strong room -- storage where the sheets are kept.
"The
functioning of the strong room was hijacked by the racketeers and it
was managed by them. It led to mismanagement and the credibility of the
strong room was compromised. No proper data with regard to the supply
status of the OMR sheets, bill numbers and challan numbers were
maintained," Dubey said.
The MP Board, also known as Vyavsayik
Pariksha Mandal or Vyapam, conducts examinations to recruit government
employees in the state and holds admission tests for medical courses.
It
has been mired in controversies for years, but the scams eventually
came to light when 20 people were arrested in 2013 for impersonating
candidates appearing for the 2009 medical entrance examinations.
According
to reports, the admission and recruitment scam involving politicians,
senior officials and businessmen in Madhya Pradesh could be pegged at
Rs.20,000 crore involving about 30,000 people.
Forty-five people associated with the Vyapam scam have died - mostly unnaturally or under mysterious circumstances.
The investigation into the scam was recently handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation by the Supreme Court.
The
CBI had registered three first information reports (FIR) on Friday -
including one related to the mysterious death of Namrata Damor - so far
being treated as a suicide, but now converted into a murder case.
Earlier, the CBI had registered five cases - taking to eight the number registered by the agency in connection with the scam.
(Sidhartha Dutta can be contacted on [email protected])