AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh's petition to the Supreme Court triggered the CBI probe into the Vyapam scam. In an interview, Singh told THE WEEK that he would also expose the links of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan with the sand mining mafia in MP. Edited excerpts:
Will the CBI probe into the Vyapam scam take the heat off Chouhan?
No, it will not. We will seek a weekly monitoring of the CBI investigation by a court-appointed special investigation team, comprising people with impeccable integrity. The media can then report the progress of the investigation, at least, on a weekly basis.
But, now the Congress campaign against Chouhan is bound to lose momentum.
We will carry on the campaign with the same vigour. For two years we kept talking about the Vyapam scam, but the national media did not take note.
I am now going to expose the involvement of Chouhan and his family members in illegal sand mining. It is well evident how his family members have been involved in it. Three persons, including an honest IAS officer, lost their lives over illegal sand mining.
Are you still demanding that Chouhan should step down as chief minister?
Of course, he should step down on ethical and moral grounds. But, we cannot expect any morality or ethics from the BJP. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh arrogantly proclaimed that they are not the UPA or the Congress that their ministers and chief ministers should resign. Had it been a Congress chief minister, he would have gone by now.
Chouhan keeps saying, 'I have done this, I have done that’ for the development of MP. But, what has he really done for the state? Such a huge scam, and I am sure it is even bigger than the 2G scam, took place under his nose.
Chouhan said the Congress suffers from 'Shivraj phobia'.
The Congress is not afflicted with 'Shivraj phobia'. We are worried about the situation where corrupt politicians, officials, policemen and middlemen colluded to corrupt an entire system.
Governor Ram Naresh Yadav, a Congressman, appears set to go.
He fell into the bad company of Chouhan, and that is why he is seeing such a day. He should have stepped down long back.
You said the RSS is also involved in Vyapam?
The RSS got people employed through the Vyapam scam. The FIR names the late K.S. Sudarshan and Suresh Soni. [Union Minister] Uma Bharti was also named. However, they have not been investigated.
