In a significant move, the Kamal Nath-led Congress government in Madhya Pradesh has opened fresh investigations into pending complaints related to the Vyapam scam.
A special team of 20 officers of Special Task Force of the Madhya Pradesh police has started looking into 197 complaints that had earlier been disposed off. Sources told THE WEEK that close to 90 fresh FIRs are likely on the basis of the complaints. The STF has been given three months to complete the investigations and take action on the complaints. Names of several influential persons including former ministers, IAS and IPS officers are likely to come into the ambit of probe, sources added.
Home Minister Bala Bachchan told the media that complaints on the scam were not properly probed during the previous BJP government to save certain influential people. “The Kamal Nath government will unveil all those names through a detailed probe,” Bachchan told mediapersons.
The home minister has directed the probe after the matter of pending complaints was taken up by Congress MLAs in the state assembly during the budget session. Whistleblowers in the scam had been pushing for an open probe into these complaints that pertain to pre-medical tests conducted by Vyapam between 2008 and 2011 and alleged irregularities in the DMAT (entrance test to private medical and dental colleges) and pre-PG (entrance to post-graduate medical and dental courses) in state colleges.
The CBI had taken up the investigations in 212 cases related to the Vyapam scam in July 2015, following a Supreme Court order in wake of death of a journalist on course of the scam story.
There had been over 1,350 complaints in the cases but the STF, which was probing the scam before CBI, registered 34 cases. It did not accept over 500 complaints, terming them as fake/unsubstantiated. Another 500-odd were accepted for probe, but later disposed as not being substantiated. Of the rest, 212 were handed over to CBI. Now, 197 more complaints have been taken up for probe.
