After bail, former minister gets a hero’s welcome

Former Madhya Pradesh minister Laxmikant Sharma, one of the main accused in the Vyapam scam, was released on bail from Bhopal central jail on Sunday after spending 18 months behind bars.

The multi-crore Vyapam scam relates to irregularities in the examinations conducted by the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board.

Several politicians and bureaucrats have been named an accused in the scam. It was first probed by the state crime branch and then the Special Task Force in 2013 after it was unearthed. Now, the Central Bureau of Investigation is handling the investigation.

Hundreds of his supporters, mostly from his hometown Sironj in Vidisha district, reached the jail premises ahead of his release.

However, his former ministerial colleagues and senior members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) remained absent. None of the leaders from the BJP chose to come for- ward by issuing statements in his support.

Sharma, however, found some support from BJP’s national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya, who through his Twitter post, congratulated Sharma on getting bail saying that the truth would prevail in the end.

Laxmikant Shar ma was granted bail on Friday by the high court’s Jabalpur bench in the last of the seven cases related to the scam in which he had not been able to get bail till the day.

It took almost a whole day for his family members to get the required documents from the district jail. Hence, he couldn’t be released from the jail till the evening.

Unlike Laxmikant Sharma, another main accused in the multi-crore scam, the then officer-on-special-duty to Madhya Pradesh governor Ram Naresh Yadav, Dhanraj Yadav, was released from the same jail on Saturday evening. Talking to journalists, the former minister said he was out of jail after undergoing a ‘sadhna’ (a rigorous spiritual practice) for 18 months.