Credit: PTI
New Delhi: Former Madhya Pradesh minister Laxmikant Sharma, his officer on special duty (OSD) and 85 others were charged by the CBI yesterday for alleged cheating and corruption in the recruitment of Grade-II contractual teachers through Vyapam in 2012, agency officials said.
The chargesheet, filed in the Bhopal special court today, has named then controller of Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board – also known as Vyapam – Pankaj Trivedi; then principal system analyst in Vyapam Nitin Mohindra, 72 candidates, two other Vyapam officials and 11 middlemen, including Sharma, they said.
O.P. Shukla, the OSD of Sharma, then technical and higher education minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state, has been named as an accused in the chargesheet, the officials said.
Mohindra and Trivedi allegedly helped in inflating marks of the candidates appearing for the examination for the appointment of Grade-II contractual teachers, they said.
They also said that the CBI has found that Sharma had appointed Trivedi as the controller of examination even when he was not in the list of shortlisted candidates for the crucial post.
Trivedi through Mohindra allegedly returned the favour by manipulating marks of the candidates ensuring their selections in the service, they said.
The agency through forensic examination of the OMR sheets filled by the candidates, found the actual marks of the accused candidates were way below than the marks shown in the results, they added.
According to the officials, CBI found the details of altered marksheets from the laptop of Mohindra.
“Investigation further revealed that public servants and other private persons had allegedly collected the examination details viz roll number, form number etc. of the candidates and provided the said details to principal system analyst, Vyapam,” CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said in a statement.
He said the examination details received by the said principal system analyst were allegedly entered into a digital file on the computer, which contained the details of the candidates along with their names/roll numbers and the names of the middlemen who had sponsored the candidates.
The official said just prior to the declaration of the result, then principal system analyst created another database in respect of the candidates whose marks he intended to increase.
“In the result data base, he allegedly increased the marks as per the requirement of the candidates so as to make them qualify the examination and thereafter the actual marks obtained by the 73 accused candidates were deleted from the original result file,” he said.
The spokesperson said the details of the candidates along with the inflated marks from the database were appended at the end of the result file.
“It was also alleged that no change in the OMR Answer Sheets could be made by him, which contained the original marks obtained by the accused candidates, which were less than the marks declared in the result,” he said.
The agency had recently filed a separate chargesheet for the appointment of Grade-III contractual teachers examination held in 2012 in which Sharma was also made an accused.