Vyapam, which has become a nation-wide metaphor for organised swindle in the name of admissions and recruitments, will be disbanded soon.
The Kamal Nath government has decided to scrap the notorious Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board or Vyavasayik Pariksha Mandal ( Vyapam in short) on the grounds that it is synonymous with corruption and has brought a bad name to Madhya Pradesh across India.
Vyapam is a multi-billion scam which surfaced in July 2013 after the Indore police arrested a dozen impersonators from a hotel who were paid to sit as proxies for candidates of the pre-medical test (PMT) -2013. The test was conducted by the Vyapam and hence the massive rip-off that unfolded subsequently came to be known as Vyapam scam.
The arrests opened a can of worms. Police interrogations led to thousands of arrests over the years. It transpired that most of the admissions and recruitments for government departments conducted through Vyapam were rigged.
The scam rocked the nation in 2016 when over 40 persons connected to it were reported mysteriously dead.
In the wake of the nationwide uproar over the scam, the Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into the cases related to the Vyapam swindle in July 2016. Former chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s alleged complicity in the scam provided the Congress a potent weapon to corner the BJP government. Vyapam scam was a major election issue in the recently-concluded Assembly election.
The Congress in its manifesto had promised refund of fees to all those candidates who were left cheated because of the nexus of the politicians-bureaucrats-middlemen and admission mafia.
Now the Congress government feels the very name Vyapam should be erased altogether. “ In place of Vyapam, we will constitute an employees’ selection commission”, said public relations minister PC Sharma.
Echoing Sharma’s view State’s higher education minister Jeetu Patwari asked what is the point of continuing with an institution which people no longer trust?
The minister said the Vyapam will be disbanded after the Lok Sabha election and a transparent body for admissions and recruitments will take its place.
The leader of opposition Gopal Bhargava has, however, described the government’s move as a meaningless exercise.