CBI CHARGES FORMER MP MINISTER IN VYAPAM CASE

BHOPAL/NEW DELHI: The CBI, on Tuesday, charged former Madhya Pradesh technical education minister Laxmikant Sharma and his then officer-on-special-duty (OSD), OP Shukla, in one of the cases related to the Vyapam scam.

A Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official familiar with the development said Sharma was charged with getting a person of his choice, Pankaj Trivedi, appointed as the Controller of Examinations in the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board also called Vyapam (Vyavsayic Pariksha Mandal).

Through Trivedi, Sharma reportedly pushed for selection of favoured candidates in the Samvida Shala Shikshak Patrata Pariksha Varg-3 Exam, conducted by Vyapam in 2011.

Besides Sharma, Shukla and Trivedi, the CBI named 92 others in the FIR.

Sharma and Shukla already spent time in prison in 2014 after the Madhya Pradesh STF, which investigated the case earlier, named them and 55 others in its charge sheet. Sharma, is also an accused in six other Vyapam cases.

So far, the CBI has filed more than 110 charge sheets in connection with the Vyapam scam and named more than 1,600 people as accused in these cases.

According to a CBI spokesperson, the agency took over investigations following a direction from the Supreme Court in 2015.

The agency’s investigation revealed that the accused and alleged middlemen collected details such as roll numbers and form numbers of favoured candidates and provided them to the then principal system analyst Nitin Mohindra in Vyapam.

“Just prior to the declaration of the result, Mohindra created another database in respect of the candidates whose marks were to be increased. It was also alleged that he increased the marks as per so as to make them qualify and thereafter deleted the original results...” said a CBI spokesman.