Tag: Vyapam

With Elections Around the Corner, Vyapam Scam Bounces Back to the Centre in MP

A special court judge’s on September 26 directed the police to file an FIR against senior Congress leaders Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Vyapam whistleblower Prashant Pandey on charges of forgery.

A judge’s extraordinary flip-flop has made Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh’s alleged direct complicity in the Vyapam scam a potentially explosive election issue in the poll-bound state. Vyapam, India’s biggest job-cum-recruitment swindle, appeared to have gradually faded from the collective memory of the Madhya Pradesh people, thanks largely to the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) lackadaisical investigation into it in the last three years. But, Bhopal special CBI court judge Suresh Singh’s two contradictory orders in a week have brought the scam bang into the centre of the electioneering in Madhya Pradesh.

On September 26, the judge directed police to register an FIR against senior Congress leaders Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Vyapam whistleblower Prashant Pandey on charges of forgery.

The directive came on a BJP leader’s complaint that the Congress leaders and the whistleblower made false allegations against the chief minister regarding the Vyapam investigation “with the intention to influence evidence and take political mileage”.

The complainant Santosh Sharma is president of the BJP’s district legal cell.

Curiously enough, the same judge had on September 22 permitted Digvijay Singh to record his statement regarding the same complaint which, five days later, he found dubious enough to order a police investigation into it along with filing an FIR against the petitioner and two others.

On September 17, Digvijay Singh had filed a private complaint alleging that investigative agencies had not acted against the chief minister in the Vyapam scam.

Before the two developments, the multi-billion rip-off was not such a big poll issue in Madhya Pradesh despite its scale and multi-layered dimensions. People’s gradual indifference to the developments in the Vyapam probe could be attributable to mainly two reasons. One, the CBI has lost interest in pursuing the scam-related cases after demonstrating initial vigour. Two, following the premier probe agency’s clean chit to the chief minister in the scam a year ago, the Vyapam was no longer viewed explosive enough to alter the existing political equations in the state.

The CBI had absolved the chief minister of the charges of tampering electronic evidence in one of the Vyapam-related cases in its submission before the Supreme Court on October 31, 2017.

After the clean chit to Chouhan, the BJP had become more aggressive while the Congress was on the defensive. The Congress’s allegations that the CBI was trying to shield the chief minister carried little conviction because it was none other than the Congress that had so vociferously demanded the federal agency’s probe into the scam.

The opposition party was adamant on a CBI probe presumably because its leaders thought that the federal agency under the Prime Minister would show no mercy to the MP chief minister. Their belief stemmed from the perception that Narendra Modi and Chouhan had had less-than-cordial relations. Chouhan was then considered marginalised BJP patriarch L.K. Advani’s protégé and, as such, was considered suspicious in Modi’s eyes. Wily Chouhan, however, proved the Congress leaders terribly wrong with his uncanny ability to win over the PM. His efforts to please the Modi appeared to have borne fruits. The CBI, to which Chouhan was extremely reluctant to hand over the Vyapam probe initially, went overboard to bail him out. The agency also slowed down investigation in other cases to the extent that the scam has become a fading memory.

Shivraj Chouhan with Narendra Modi

The Congress believed that Narendra Modi and Chouhan had had less-than-cordial relations, but it would not prove to be so. Credit: PTI

Moreover, overexposure of the scam’s multiple aspects in the media in first two years since it surfaced had caused a fatigue to set in among people. As people grew more and more insured to it, media too grew indifferent to the scam-related developments.

That was the reason why the Congress had been, of late, failing to get expected traction to its agitations on the issue.

If BJP leader Sharma had not filed the petition leading to the FIR against the Congress leaders, the Vyapam scam might have been a ‘sub-judice” matter. For, the court had given next date for hearing on Digvijay Singh’s petition December 20, by which time assembly election will be over. But on the local BJP legal cell head’s plea, the court has decided to hear the matter on November 13, when electioneering will be at a peak in MP.

Now the scam has bounced back to the centre stage and the Congress has pretty good reason to thank the judge.

Special judge Suresh Singh ordered Bhopal police to immediately send an FIR copy against the Congress leaders to the court. He said that the court could not investigate a matter which was the job of the police and hence an FIR should be registered under section 465,468,471,474 and 120-B of the IPC.

The judge directed the police to complete the investigations and submit the final report on November 13.

Counsel for the petitioner, Shreyraj Saxena, said that the investigation into Vyapam scam was first carried out under the supervision of MP high court, which formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to monitor the probe. After it was handed over to the CBI, the apex court was monitoring the investigation, he pointed out.

“Yet, the Congress leaders have been accusing STF, SIT and CBI of biased investigation and are challenging the validity of their findings,” the petitioner’s counsel said.

The lawyer was referring to Digvijay Singh’s submission in the same court on September 22. Singh claimed that the police conspired to tamper with electronic evidence to save the chief minister in the scam.

Senior lawyers from Congress, Kapil Sibal and Vivek Tankha, had appeared in the court while Digvijay Singh’s statement was being recorded.

The complaint has been filed under Section 200 of the CrPC. Nearly 27,000 pages of documents as evidence have been submitted along with it.

Kapil Sibal accused Chouhan of being at the root of corruption in the Vyapam case.

Sibal’s charge is serious and requires recapitulation of the scam from the beginning.

Digvijay Singh stated that Chouhand had tampered with electronic evidence. Credit: Facebook

The Vyapam’s history

On July 13, 2013, Indore police arrested from various hotels, a dozen youth who were to sit as proxies for candidates appearing in the pre-medical test (PMT). The arrests opened a can of worms. The interrogation led to arrests of top executives of the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB) or Vyavasayik Pariksha Mandal (Vyapam). The executives, when grilled, started singing as canary. It transpired that all the tests for admission in medical colleges and recruitment for state government departments were rigged. A seemingly interminable drive for arrests followed. The number went up to over 2,000 in a year and as many remained absconding. The arrested included students, parents, bureaucrats, education mafia, politicians, middlemen, scorers apart from employees of the Vyapam.

While the investigation was on and arrests were being made at frantic speed, nobody had the foggiest of idea what the Indore police had done soon after the lid on the scam blew off.

Digvijay’s lawyer Kapil Sibal says the Indore police had seized the hard disk of accused Nitin Mohindra on July 17, 2013, four days after the first arrests were made and asked cyber expert Prashant Pandey to download the details in the disk.

Mahindra was the PEB’s chief system analyst. He kept meticulous records of the candidates of various tests conducted by the board with those who recommended the candidates. The record was stored in excel sheets. The Indore police had drafted Pandey to crack the computer hardware and retrieve the record. Pandey did his job as asked. But he allegedly went a step further – he copied the mirror image of the excel sheets too, presumably without the knowledge of the Indore police.

Top Indore police officials including then IG Vipin Maheshwari and additional SP crime Dilip Soni had a role to play in the deletion of names, according to the petition filed by Digvijay Singh.

His counsel Ajay Gupta says that the hard disk had been tampered with on instructions of the chief minister to protect himself in the case.

Pandey, the cyber expert-turned-whistleblower, fell out with the police. Later, Bhopal police arrested him. After getting bail, Pandey fled to Delhi and got a stay on further arrests from the Delhi high court.

While staying in Delhi, Indore-based Pandey reportedly came into contact with Digvijay Singh. He handed over the mirror image of the excel sheet that he had retrieved from Mahindra’s computer. The mirror image allegedly had Chouhan’s name entered as “CM” 48 times as recommender against candidates of contact teacher-grade II test which the PEB had conducted. The Indore police had allegedly tempered with the original excel sheet to replace the “CM” entries with that of senior BJP leader Uma Bharti and, at some places, ‘Raj Bhawan”.

Sibal claims the hash value generated with each action had been recorded which proved that tampering was done. He also claimed that the names of Uma Bharti and other ministers with serial numbers too were in the hard disk.

For over 20 months, the “evidence” with Pandey remained a secret. Once Uma Bharti’s name had figured in the scam during investigation in January, 2014, she flew into a rage and sought a CBI probe into the scam. The then director general of police, Nandan Dubey, had to go to her house to persuade the angry sadhvi. With an assurance of a clean chit, she fell silent on the matter.

Digvijay Singh, along with other top Congress leaders and eminent lawyers such as Kapil Sibal, K.T.S. Tulsi and Vivek Tankha, landed in Bhopal on February 16, 2015. In a press conference that day, they claimed to have electronic evidence that established the chief minister’s complicity in the Vyapam scam. Digvijay Singh admitted that Pandey had supplied the evidence to him. The same day, Digvijay Singh handed over the pen drive containing the ‘original excel sheet’ to the then chairman of the special investigation team (SIT) justice Chandresh Bhushan. The SIT had been formed on the Madhya Pradesh high court’s directive to supervise investigation in the scam by a special task force (STF) of the state police.

The SIT head sent the hard disk seized from Mohindra to the forensic laboratory in Gandhinagar. The report said it was not tampered with.

Based on the report, in April 2015, the SIT told the MP high court’s then chief justice A.M. Khanwilkar that the documents used by Singh to target Chouhan were forged. The chief justice accepted the plea.

Digvijay Singh got another opportunity to produce the alleged evidence against the chief minister when the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to probe into the Vyapam scam in July 2015. The order was after a nationwide uproar over the mysterious deaths of around 40 persons related to the scam, directly or indirectly. The Congress too had been mounting pressure for a CBI probe.

Supreme Court ordered the CBI to probe into the Vyapam scam in July 2015. Credit: PTI

SC took upon itself to monitor the investigation

The CBI informed the Supreme Court on December 15, 2016 that the hard disk and pen drive which were sent to Central Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), Hyderabad, for scrutiny suggested no tampering.

Sibal contends that the CBI had told the Supreme Court in November 2016 that the FSL denied tampering in the evidence, whereas the lab had sent the report to the agency on December 23, 2016. Sibal claims he had sent the same electronic evidence to the Truth Lab in Bangalore, an independent forensics lab, which found that the data was tampered with.

On May 3, 2017, the CBI reiterated before the court that “the allegations of tampering of the seized hard disk were false and that some of these persons making such allegations were found to be indulging in creation of false digital records in the pen drive and on that basis, making false complaints”. It said it would be taking steps against the culprits in accordance with the law.

On October 31, 2017, the ongoing CBI probe zeroed in on Digvijay Singh and whistleblower Pandey, while giving a clean chit to Chouhan. It sought court permission to prosecute both Digvijay Singh and Pandey.

The CBI contention prompted three MP ministers – Dr Narottam Mishra, Bhupendra Singh and Vishwas Sarang – to demand a criminal case against Digvijaya Singh, Pandey and another whistleblower, Dr Anand Rai, for making false allegations against the chief minister. They called on CBI DIG Tarun Gaba, who was heading the probe, and urged him to book the “culprits” under Sections 120B, 182, 192, 195, 465 and 468 for criminal conspiracy, forgery, and fabrication of false evidence.

After that, the top Congress leadership suspended the legal fight against the chief minister, though its workers kept organising agitations over the issue.

Barely two months ahead of the assembly election, the Congress has an opportunity to corner the chief minister.

On being asked if the timing of filing the complaint had something to do with upcoming elections, Rajya Sabha member and AICC legal cell head Vivek Tankha said a large number of documents had to be studied to prepare for the case and hence the delay.

Reacting on the court’s order for FIR against him, Jyotiraditya Scindia tweeted that ” truth can only be harassed but cannot be defeated. We will not be intimated or bowed down and would fight this battle for the youth of our state till our last breaths.”

MPCC chief Kamal Nath said the party would take appropriate steps after studying the matter.

Now all eyes on the police in the wake of the court order. Will the police arrest the Congress leaders?

Rakesh Dixit is a Bhopal-based journalist.

Vyapam Case: CBI Files Fresh Chargesheet Against MP Minister

The chargesheet filed in the Bhopal special court has named former MP minister Sharma, his OSD and 85 others for alleged cheating and corruption.

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.

Vyapam Scam: The CBI’s Clean Chit Is Not the Final Word on the Matter

The details of the clean chit are not known – and the press release issued by the CBI on October 31, 2017, raises more questions than it answers.

The details of the clean chit are not known – and the press release issued by the CBI on October 31, 2017, raises more questions than it answers.

The FIR in the case was registered by the CBI on August 3. Credit: PTI

As of date, the chargesheet filed by the CBI has not been made available, even to the accused. Credit: PTI

The headline of the press release dated October 31, 2017, on the Central Bureau of Investigation website reads like a headline of a newspaper on a sensational issue: “CBI finds no tampering in the hard disc seized by State Police ”. This is a strange issue to focus on for a prosecuting agency. It also betrays the anxiety of the CBI, to declare the Madhya Pradesh chief minister innocent in the scam. As of date, the chargesheet filed by the CBI has not been made available, even to the accused. The details of the clean chit are thus not known, apart from the press release issued by the CBI, which, for anybody conversant with the facts and history of this case, raises more questions than it answers.

The CBI’s press release is quite silent on the identity of the 490 accused or on the many allegations regarding the deaths of crucial witnesses. It is silent on the fact that the CBI did not open any new cases after the investigation was transferred to it. There is only one ‘fact’ it reveals, that as per the CBI, the Madhya Pradesh chief minister is innocent.

The press release reads:

As per CFSL report, the computer with the HDD in question was last shut down on July 15, 2013 and no file on the said HDD was accessed after July 15, 2013. All the five Excel files in the pen drive provided by the said private person to the Hon’ble high court of Delhi in W.P. (Crl.) 334/2015 as well as to CBI, containing reference ‘CM’ in it, were created or last modified on or after July 18, 2013 as per the report of CFSL whereas the alleged HDD in question was last shut down on July 15, 2013 as per CFSL report. The pen drive provided by the said private person to the Hon’ble high court of Delhi as well as to CBI contains false documents created subsequent to seizure of HDD in question. There is no grain of truth in the allegation that the HDD seized on July 18, 2013 from the office of then Principal System Analyst, Vyapam was tampered.

This hard disk is allegedly the one from which the Excel sheets which referred to ‘CM’ were recovered. Copies of these Excel sheets were made available to the ‘private person’, Prashant Pandey, a whistle blower working for the Special Task Force (STF) investigating agency then working on VYAPAM scam cases. He then copied them onto a pen drive and released them when he realised that there was some discrepancy between the actual Excel sheets and what was being purportedly investigated. Pandey was made to pay dearly for the same.

Also read: Is the CBI Abdicating Responsibility on the Vyapam Scam Investigation?

Pandey was hounded by Madhya Pradesh police in August 2014 on a suspicion that he had sensitive information in VYAPAM scam cases relating to chief minister Shivraj Chouhan and other high profile persons. He was arrested on August 6, 2014, in a false and fictitious case, his laptop and phone seized by M.P. Nagar police, Bhopal. He was released on bail subsequently on August 10, 2014, when officials from STF informed Trial Court in Bhopal that Pandey was working for the STF. This was submitted on affidavit to the Delhi high court in a writ petition filed by Pandey and police protection was granted to him. Pandey has since had to move to Delhi from Indore.

Pandey’s evidence is quite reasonable and believable. What the CBI is now claiming, that the shutdown date for the computer to which this hard disk was attached crystallises the matter, is something that has not come up in any of the previous forensic reports, and neither does it prove the inauthenticity of the Excel sheets released by Pandey. It stands to reason that when a copy is made of any file from a hard disk, its date of modification will be changed when it is so copied. To cite that as evidence of forgery is quite bizarre. The moot question is how Pandey had the same Excel sheets that were on Nitin Mohindra’s Computer on July 18, 2013 – the date of seizure of the hard disks by the Indore police.

The issue of veracity of hard disks seized from the VYAPAM office in Bhopal is instrumental to the VYAPAM scam investigation as the “deleted data” from the hard disks retrieved by the Directorate of Forensic Science, Gandhinagar, Gujarat between July 2013 and September 2013 is the basis of numerous FIR’s filed by investigating agencies. Tampering of hard disks therefore goes to the very root of the matter and would possibly discredit the entire edifice of investigation carried out so far by investigating agencies, be it Indore police, STF and now CBI.

At this point of time, the chargesheet filed by CBI or the CFSL report of Hyderabad is before the CBI court, Bhopal. No one has seen it. The assertion in the press release of CBI that “The pen drive provided by the said private person to the Hon’ble high court of Delhi as well as to CBI contains false documents created subsequent to seizure of HDD in question” would be premature.

Also read: Vyapam: How a Munnabhai-style Exam Scam Turned Into a Macabre Thriller

The veracity of the report of CFSL on the hard disks of VYAPAM office and the pen drive submitted by Pandey is yet to be adjudicated upon by the CBI court. CBI is an investigating agency not a court of law.

Certain aspects need to be highlighted in the present case before Pandey is condemned as guilty by the investigating agency, CBI:

  1. As per the chargesheet of STF (then investigating agency), filed in court, the hard disk of one Nitin Mahindra was seized on July 18, 2013, by the Indore police, thereafter the seized hard disk was sent to Gandhi Nagar, DFS (Guajrat)  for analysis on July 22, 2013.
  2. Anand Rai (another whistle blower in VYAPAM scam cases), in his affidavit before CBI submitted on January 23, 2016, revealed that he was in the office of IG police, Indore, Vipin Maheswari on 17 July, 2013, when Additional SP Crime Branch, Dilip Soni, who had possession of the hard disk, arrived with the hard disk in the IG’s office. The commissioner, Indore was also present at that moment. This evidence casts very grave doubts on the story of the hard disk being sealed by the investigative agency. This evidence means that the hard disk seemed to have been in circulation, much after the date of its claimed sealing. The official version is that the hard disk was sealed in Bhopal for transfer to Gujarat FSL. If that is so, then how could Dilip Soni hand over the hard disk in question to IG, police on July 17, 2013, in Indore?
  3. As per the press release dated October 31, 2017, of CBI, the hard disk in question of Nitin Mohindra was last shut down July 15, 2013. If the hard disk was shut and sealed from July 15, 2013 to July 22, 2013, when it was sent to Gujarat for analysis, by Indore police, then how could Prashant Pandey, a private person, not connected to VYAPAM or Indore police, have had access to the same Excel file with “CM” and other common names in it on July 18, 2013? How could this private person have known the details of these Excel sheets and the various names and details mentioned in it?
  4. As per the Truth lab report (the private lab to which the pen drives were sent by Pandey’s lawyer for forensic analysis), on the pen drive of Pandey, Excel sheets regarding Samvida Shikshak Varg 2 and 3 having “CM, “Minister 1”, “Minister 2”, “Minister 3”, “Minister 4” was modified on July 18, 2013 between 16:20  to 20:15.
  5. It is to be noted that both the Excel sheets, one retrieved from hard disk of Nitin Mohindra and other from the pen drive of Prashant Pandey, had the same names of candidates and recommenders except “CM” “Minister 1” “Minister 2” “Minister 3” and “Minister 4” . This is not denied. So a private person had access to these files on July 18, 2013, with the modification which is duly proved.
  6. Evidence of these files was submitted before the Delhi high court in March 2015, and put in a sealed cover by Pandey. It is on the orders of the Delhi high court and later the Supreme Court, that CBI, after many years, sent it to CFSL, Hyderabad.

These points are just for reference to show that prima facie the assertion of CBI that “The pen drive provided by the said private person to the Hon’ble high court of Delhi as well as to CBI contains false documents created subsequent to seizure of HDD in question” is to be taken with a pinch of salt.

It appears that the Final report filed by CBI before CBI court will be challenged by appropriate persons and if necessary, a formal chargesheet/complaint will be filed in the court of law to assist the court in the course of justice.

Vaibhav Srivastava is Counsel to the whistleblowers in the Vyapam Case. Partner at Srivastava Naved & Parashar Partners.

Intimidation, Political Collusion: Vyapam Scandal, Ram Rahim Case Share Noticeable Similarities

The manner in which the state machinery, including the police, intimidates family members of whistleblowers or those who report scandals, has become a recurring pattern, one that should not go unpunished.

The manner in which the state machinery, including the police, intimidates family members of whistleblowers or those who report scandals, has become a recurring pattern, one that should not go unpunished.

Vyapam

Vyapam whistle blower Ashish Chaturvedi (left), Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh. Credit: Youtube

A small news report from Bhopal, tucked away innocuously amidst other stories in the paper caught my eye some weeks ago. Itss similarity with the Dera Sacha Sauda (DSS) rape case, where Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was sentenced to 20 years in jail by a CBI judge, was too obvious to be ignored.

The news item referred to Vyapam whistleblower Ashish Chaturvedi’s father being knocked down by a car in Gwalior. The bit that got me agitated was that the victim “lay writhing on the road for 35 minutes while five cops stood and watched rather than help him”.

Social activist Chaturvedi has been leading the charge in exposing the huge Vyapam scandal that has rocked Madhya Pradesh for over a decade. In essence, this was a complex web of impersonators appearing for employment examinations, held under the aegis of the MP government, which morphed into a huge cash-for-jobs scam.

Established in 1982 as a state professional examination board, the word Vyapam is taken from the Hindi nomenclature Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal, and while occasional irregularities were reported, as in other states, the scale of the corruption scandal only came into the public domain in July 2009.

Preliminary investigations suggested that a vast web of corruption had been established in MP that cast aspersions on the higher-ups in the government. This is where the plot thickens and certain strands correspond with the DSS-Sirsa scandal.

The MP chief minister did the right thing in setting up a committee to probe the Vyapam scandal in end 2009 and some arrests were made, but from 2010, mysterious and unnatural deaths became a recurring pattern in the Vyapam trail. Those who could provide evidence disappeared and local sources warily hint that what has been unearthed is the tip of a murky ice-berg: a minister in the local cabinet was also booked and fingers have been pointed all the way up to the top of the Bhopal government.

The Vyapam case was handed over to a special task force in 2013, which confirmed the ‘unnatural’ deaths, and in mid 2015, the Supreme Court ordered the case to be handed over to the CBI. In the last two years, the Vyapam case was   ostensibly pursued ‘vigorously’, a claim belied by the kind of intimidation that those who are pushing for justice are facing. We saw an example of this in Gwalior two weeks ago, when the senior Chaturvedi was knocked down by a car and the local police did nothing.

It may be recalled that in the DSS rape case, the scandal was first reported in 2002 by a local editor, Ram Chander Chhatrapati, who was brazenly shot by henchmen of the ‘baba’, while the local police did not even record Chander’s statement for three weeks even as he was on his deathbed.

The DSS rape case was reported to the prime minister’s office at the time and handed over to the CBI, where it meandered for many years. To the credit of the agency, which did not allow the case to sink despite obvious political overtones and pressure to ‘protect’ the accused, the case reached partial closure in late August 2017.

It may be surmised that the Panchkula-Rohtak final chapter in the DSS saga was enabled by the indomitable courage of the rape victims who stayed the course from 2002 despite threats to their lives, the doggedness of the CBI, the altruistic contribution of legal luminaries like Justice Rajinder Sachar and an alert media that finally rose to the occasion after a long period of somnolence.

The manner in which the Gwalior hit-and-run case was handled reeks of a deplorable attempt by the local police to intimidate the whistleblower by attacking family members. The MP government must not allow such transgressions to go unpunished, even if they were condoned in the past for reasons of political expediency.

The manner in which the DSS case has been dealt with – including the inordinate delay of 15 years – has set a new benchmark of societal expectation for political probity and institutional integrity. In the last few years, citizen awareness has led to more assertiveness and higher expectations from its elected representatives.

It was on this plank that Narendra Modi emerged triumphant as prime minister in mid-2014. The halfway mark of his government has been crossed and the BJP will soon be gearing up for the 2019 election.

The BJP leadership in Bhopal and Delhi still has a slender opportunity to pursue Vyapam in a manner that will demonstrate a new index of integrity and resolve – or let it flounder as many such cases of political venality have in the past.

An alert electorate will be watching very carefully. How the Chaturvedi case in Gwalior is dealt with, as well as how matters of sanctity of law and the safety of the citizens are handled, will be critical litmus tests for Modi and Amit Shah.

Commodore C. Uday Bhaskar is Director, Society for Policy Studies, New Delhi.

Is the CBI Abdicating Responsibility on the Vyapam Scam Investigation?

Whistleblowers and victims rejoiced when the Supreme Court handed over the Vyapam scam cases to the CBI. But the agency’s investigation so far leaves much to be desired.

Whistleblowers and victims rejoiced when the Supreme Court handed over the Vyapam scam cases to the CBI. But the agency’s investigation so far leaves much to be desired.

Representative image. Credit: Reuters

Representative image. Credit: Reuters

 “All in all, the entire scheme of events, can well be described as a scam…a racket of sorts.”
∼ Supreme Court

“This could only be effectuated, by a corrupted administrative machinery. Whether, the nefarious and crooked administrative involvement, was an inside activity, or an outside pursuit, is inconsequential. All in all, the entire scheme of events, can well be described as a scam…a racket of sorts,” observed the Supreme Court in judgment dated February 13 in the civil appeal Nidhi Kaim & Anr vs State of MP and Ors. The court declined to invoke its powers under article 142 of the constitution to revoke the cancellation of candidature of 634 students who had been admitted illegally, using fraudulent means, to MBBS courses between 2008-2012 through the infamous Vyapam professional examination board in Madhya Pradesh. This was an important moment for the whistleblowers and victims who fought for years, at great personal cost, to expose this scam. But unfortunately, in the absence of a complete investigation into all aspects of the scam, it seems that this unprecedented scam is set to fade into oblivion with all the powerful people against whom material has been found during investigation being effectively exonerated by the CBI.

The Vyapam scam is arguably the biggest admission-cum-recruitment scam in India, spanning from 2008 to 2013, with more than 2,500 accused and around 200 criminal cases. The sheer magnitude of the operation and the pervasiveness of the corruption entrenched in the administrative machinery has caused serious suspicions regarding the role of the Madhya Pradesh government, from the clerical staff at the Vyapam offices to “highly placed persons”.

Even the Madhya Pradesh government was forced to concede before the Supreme Court that the case presented challenges of a unique nature. The government counsel appearing for Vyapam very fairly submitted to the court in the Nidhi Kaim matter that “Seeing the gravity and extent of the criminality and the highly-placed persons involved, the investigation came to be entrusted to the CBI”. He further submitted that “the instant case constituted a deep-rooted conspiracy involving parents, students, government officials, racketeers and various middle-men. … The instant scam, it was pointed out, was going on for years together.”

Initially the Vyapam scam, which surfaced in 2013 in Indore, was investigated by a special task force (STF) of the Madhya Pradesh police. Grave doubts were raised regarding this investigation. The STF seemed to be operating on the basis of a pick-and-choose method, allegedly being soft on the “highly placed persons” despite their names appearing in incriminating material like excel sheets retrieved from the deleted data on prime accused Nitin Mohindra’s hard disk (Mohindra was principal analyst at Vyapam), which formed part of the chargesheet submitted to the trial court.

By mid 2015, the infamous alleged deaths related to the Vyapam scam dominated Indian print and visual media, and a number of petitions were filed by senior politicians like Digvijaya Singh and whistleblowers from Vyapam in the Supreme Court, asking that the investigation be transferred to the CBI.

The Supreme Court, through an order dated June 9, 2015 in the writ petition Digvijaya Singh vs State of MP & Ors transferred the investigation of criminal cases related to Vyapam scam to the CBI, as well as cases related to deaths of persons that are allegedly linked with the Vyapam scam, for a fair and impartial enquiry.

The CBI, being the premier investigating agency of the country, enjoyed the trust of the petitioners as well as the Supreme Court. Expectations were high and hopes resurrected that justice would be finally served and the real perpetrators, occupying high posts in the Madhya Pradesh government, would be facing prosecution.

Unfortunately, the CBI investigation leaves much to be desired:

  1. The CBI has not filed any new FIR relating to the Vyapam scam since the Supreme Court’s order (apart from a preliminary inquiry into the death cases). It has only taken over cases from the STF. This, despite thousands of complaints relating to the Vyapam scam by the people of Madhya Pradesh, which could have widened the investigation and possibly helped the CBI unearth the truth.
  2. No arrests of high-profile persons from the administrative or political machinery of state has been made by the CBI. This despite several well-known names, including from the ruling political party, featuring in the excel sheet retrieved from Mohindra’s computer as recommenders of candidates.
  3. Certain details on the CBI investigation were revealed by “top sources” in the agency to the Times of India on June 15, 2016. These “top sources” said that “our probe has also revealed that the corruption happened mostly at junior level, not the political level”. This gives an inkling that CBI had decided not to probe the bigwigs.
  4. CBI’s “top sources” also told the Times of India that “there is no conclusive evidence of political conspiracy in the Vyapam scam or whether it was run like an organised crime”. This belies the fact that year after year candidates qualified in the admission and recruitment examination either by paying money to Vyapam officials and middlemen who were agents/conduits or getting the recommendation of influential persons from ruling political circles. Rationally, this repetitive exercise can only occur in an organised manner.

Further, on December 15, 2016, while disposing of the writ petition, the Supreme Court declined to further monitor the investigation of the Vyapam cases by the CBI. The court directed the agency to complete investigations as expeditiously as possible, preferably within four months.

Thus, the investigation into the Vyapam scam remains incomplete. The CBI needs no court order or permission to register additional FIRs and to complete its investigation. The agency, which to the whistleblowers and victims of the Vyapam scam seemed to the be proverbial cavalry arriving to save the day, seems to have abdicated most of its responsibility. They have chosen to limit their investigation to re-investigating the FIRs registered by the STF and has ignored clear avenues, such as excel sheets implicating senior government office-bearers. It should be the chargesheets of the CBI, after investigation, placed before CBI courts in Madhya Pradesh, that should evaluate the evidence presented and pass orders regarding conviction or acquittal. The CBI has, effectively, acquitted the most influential on its own.

The recent judgment by the Supreme Court in Nidhi Kaim & Anr vs State of MP & Ors and the observations made therein about the Vyapam scam are a grim reminder of the realities of modern India – of misguided youth, desperate parents, opportunistic middlemen, criminal racketeers, corrupt government officials and highly-influential persons providing patronage to this criminal activity. Our only hope is an upright, fair and impartial investigation by the CBI and that brings real culprits to justice. There is still time for the CBI to get its act together and to investigate this scam thoroughly, regardless of who is found to be involved in the scam.

Vaibhav Srivastava is one of the lawyers involved in the Vyapam cases before the Supreme Court. He is currently a partner at Srivastava Naved & Parashar Partners.

Instituting a Constitutional Press Council Will Help the Indian Media Do Its Job

The media is meant to report the truth, but the structure and vested interests of the Indian press have stopped that from happening.

The media is meant to report the truth, but the structure and vested interests of the Indian press have stopped that from happening.

The daily dose of news. Credit: Mike Prince/Flickr CC BY 2.0

The daily dose of news. Credit: Mike Prince/Flickr CC BY 2.0

James Madison famously argued that “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty”. Seen in this light, the media performs three crucial functions in society: it gives a voice to the voiceless, creates a forum for a dignified dialectic and constructs an agenda to produce democratic and progressive outcomes. To do justice to these responsibilities, it is imperative that the media report the truth objectively and portray a diversity of issues and opinions.

Unfortunately, the media in India has succumbed to misinforming to manufacture consent, tabloidisation for higher revenues and even creating or exacerbating societal tensions. Whatever the raison d’être for this sordid state of affairs, the upshot is that the media is either managed (by incentives to the channel or to specific journalists) or censored (by interference in content or outright suppression).

Censorship can be both internal and external. Internally, senior decision makers within a media organisation suppress or bypass credible stories because they have been personally compromised (by external influences) or because of their personal biases and interests (including but not limited to the hope of personal advancement). Externally, the media faces pressures from corporate or political ownership and from the government. Corporate and political ownership of media houses forces them to operate as profit-making or propaganda ventures. They no longer function as sources of truth, instead becoming mouthpieces for vested interests. Unfortunately, the complete lack of transparency in such ventures makes it nearly impossible to analyse the contractualisation of news in further detail.

On the other hand, it is easier to understand how governments coerce media outlets to dilute, self-censor or redact what is perceived to be objectionable. Factually, government advertisements form nearly 50% of the total volume of advertisements to an established newspaper. A Supreme Court committee has highlighted how governments (mis)use their publicity budgets to further their partisan interests. Consider the manner in which money was allocated by the government last year:

Government expenditure vs weekly impressions (electronic media)

Name of media group TV weekly impressions

(in 000s)

 Expenditure on advertisements to electronic media, 2015-‘16 

(in Rs.)

 Expenditure per 1,000 views
India Today Group 2,35,119 2,00,89,900 85
ABP 1,70,470 12,25,93,970 719
Zee 16,648 4,53,17,888 2,722
Bennett & Coleman 1,080 1,49,43,115 13,836
IBN 699 9,40,08,153 1,34,489
NDTV 446 7,93,58,542 1,77,934

Government expenditure vs readership (print media) 

Name of media group Readership

(in 000s)

 Expenditure to print media, 2015-‘16

 (in Rs)

 Expenditure per 1,000 views
Dainik Jagran 17,204 23,59,37,455 13,714
Dainik Bhaskar Group 13,830 19,05,54,954 13,778
Bennett & Coleman 12,355 64,89,75,750 52,527
ABP 6,656 11,60,84,702 17,441
The Hindu 1,622 10,44,97,635 64,425

As is evident from the tables, a media outlet’s public reach is not the yardstick for government expenditure. Even though India Today and ABP (electronic news), and Dainik Jagran and Dainik Bhaskar (print media) outperform others in terms of viewership and readership, a higher proportion of government advertisements are routed towards other outlets. No grounds have been specified for this differentiated disbursal, which certainly raises questions of propriety and hints towards selective patronage.

Where the carrot of advertising budgets fails, the stick of regulation is used to muzzle individual journalists as well as media outlets. As a recent report has highlighted, 2015 witnessed over 41 cases of censorship, 48 cases of defamation, 14 cases of sedition and eight cases of surveillance against individual journalists. Conversely, the recent ban on NDTV India exemplifies how media outlets are silenced. Such issues routinely occur because the government reserves the exclusive power to decree what is and is not in sync with the nation’s (or to be more accurate, the government’s) interests and hence arbitrarily expurgates programme content. This is especially problematic because an individual’s or civil society’s interests are often not aligned to those of the government. For example, the government may seek to mine in a sensitive area, something civil society may not necessarily endorse because of ecological or social concerns.

When that doesn’t work, non-state actors (and sometimes even the state apparatus, as in Chhattisgarh) are deployed to intimidate journalists or even inflict violence. The mysterious deaths of reporters covering the Vyapam and mining scams in Madhya Pradesh are just some of the many instances of inconvenient media coverage being excised through violence. According to a Press Council of India report, 80 journalists and five media persons have been murdered in India since 1990 (by May 2016, this had increased to 94). It is no surprise that India ranked a lowly 133 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index.

There is therefore an urgent need to protect journalists, while ensuring that the media as a whole functions objectively and adheres to journalistic ethics. Unfortunately, the present Press Council of India is wholly inadequate for several reasons. Its mandate is limited to only the print and not to the electronic, online or broadcast media; it has no powers to enforce its orders; it has powers to adjudicate, but usually resorts to mediation to placate vested interests; it has no role in shaping, furthering or implementing journalistic standards; and it has no powers to impose fines or penalties or take any action against offenders. Furthermore, numerous self regulatory agencies (News Broadcasting Standards Authority, Broadcast Editors’ Association, Advertising Standards Council of India and others like them) have proved to be weak and ineffective.

This regulatory vacuum has exacerbated the rot in the profession and incentivised interference from the government and nefarious corporations (who both resist accountability). It is therefore important that an empowered constitutional body which would oversee, protect and regulate journalists and media houses be institutionalised.

The advantages of such a body would be multi-fold. Being a constitutional body, it would be comparatively more immune from extraneous influences. Its membership (which should ideally include a retired Supreme Court judge as chairperson, a retired civil servant, two civil society activists and two members each from the print, electronic and online media) would require cross party consensus, and any alteration in its structure would necessitate a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.

This council’s oversight would cover electronic and online media organisations, on the lines of the Norwegian Press Council. Third, it would have a vastly expanded mandate and the powers of a civil court. Not only would it be able to take suo moto action, it would also be able to penalise and recommend action against offenders. The body will also have the power to regulate the excessive concentration of media outlets (print, electronic or online) with any one corporation. In addition, it would be able conduct periodic audits of the media, especially to ensure that its freedoms, ethics and standards are not impinged upon. These audits would have to be placed before parliament and mandatorily discussed by the concerned standing committee.

Finally, it is important to preserve a balance between protecting the media’s independence and regulating its excesses. The council may unsettle this delicate balance. Therefore, to ensure adequate safeguards the council’s yearly report could be voted upon by both the houses of parliament.

Penultimately, the aim of the media is to function as a nation’s conscience keeper. Unfortunately, it has been found utterly wanting in this regard, for which there are those who are more liable. However, it is equally true that all of us are somewhat responsible for the media’s perversion by being mute bystanders to the suppression of the truth. Without the truth, we have no way to reflect on or remedy the ills that plague our society. As a nation, if we are to keep rising to ever greater heights, we must embrace the truth, no matter how bitter or uncomfortable. Under the current socio-political climate in India, this is all the more essential. As George Orwell once said, “in a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”.

Pushparaj Deshpande is currently an analyst with the All-India Congress Committee. He has worked on legislation and policy with various MPs.

Medical Council’s NEET: Unfair, Unjust, Arbitrary

The real impact of NEET, which has been unconstitutionally pushed down the throat of medical education, is that it is anti-poor, anti-minority, anti-federal and anti-constitution.

The real impact of NEET, which has been unconstitutionally pushed down the throat of medical education, is that it is anti-poor, anti-minority, anti-federal and anti-constitution.

Supreme Court of India

Supreme Court of India

Given the huge diversity of India and its federal system, the Constitution was interpreted to allow states to conduct exams for their government seats. Various universities and colleges conducted their own tests. Similarly, minority institutions were constitutionally protected and held their own tests.

Of course, problems existed. There were some conflicts on the admission of students between the universities and their colleges. The government coveted more seats for Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Class (OBC) from private institutions in addition to its own. There were powerful indictments that private institutions were charging huge fees under the table. The Supreme Court successfully resolved these problems in its decision of 2002 but the Medical Council of India (MCI) wants to subvert this decision with its National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) all-India admission tests.

The story

The story is a little complicated and goes to the heart of higher education in India. From 1951, the Supreme Court has been dealing with issues related to education and reservations. In the case of Unnikrishan (1993), the Supreme Court made a huge attempt to virtually nationalise the distribution of college seats to favour the disadvantaged. This failed miserably because the better off got the subsidised seats and institutions complained of huge budgetary problems. Eventually, this led to the famous decision in T.M.A. Pai’s case (2002), decided by 11 judges. The point of the T.M.A. Pai judgment was (a) to accept that college and university education could not be provided by the government alone but by a powerful combination of the public and private sectors; (b) to prevent government interference by saying that unaided private colleges would have autonomy in matters of (i) admission of students (ii) governing bodies (iii) staff (subject to fairness and compliance with welfare statutes) and (iv) fees and finance subject to reasonableness.

Even majority religious educational institutions had this autonomy subject to reservations, if aided. This formula was confirmed in a 7-judge case Inamdar (2005) which while respecting the right of private colleges to admit students of their choice with transparency, fairness and non-exploitation of fees under autonomous oversight, suggested that the colleges in each state get together to devise a single association test. So, there were to be two tests in each state: government and association. Some states wanted all tests to be conducted by the government. At one end, Tamil Nadu selected students based on class 12 exams whether in English or Tamil. Andhra Pradesh had a constitutional amendment on distribution of seats. Most states had their own tests to suit their specific needs. The association tests (and fees) were overseen by special committees. Some famous and impeccably honest colleges (like Manipal) conducted their own exams. Some devised tests to ensure that medical candidates would serve the rural areas, like Christian Medical College, Vellore. MG College in Wardha added tests on Gandhian ethics. Against all this, Madhya Pradesh enacted legislation in 2007 to take away total control of all tests and fee fixation from private institutions, giving it to the state. MP has the worst track record. Its examining agency (Vyapam) was not just corrupt but generated an embarrassing scam – a nightmare that should have alerted the nation to the foolishness of entrusting the state with a monopoly over admissions and fee fixation.

NEET struck-down (2014) and resurrected (2016)

All educational regulatory agencies are riddled with corruption (for example the AICTE, MCI, to a lesser extent UGC). The MCI has a powerful dispensation to grant permission to start colleges, decide whether they can continue their quota of students, determine whether these institutions can expand their activities and hear complaints. The MCI was so corrupt that in 2011, the council was replaced by a board of dovernors. When this ‘takeover’ ended, the MCI was up to its own corrupt ways which continue till date. Parliament’s report of 2015 showed how MCI is deep into ineptitude and corruption, and wants to abolish it.

How was the MCI to redeem itself? The truth was that it could not be redeemed, but the MCI felt that it must flex its regulatory muscles by suggesting a National Educational Eligibility Test (NEET). The supposed purpose was that a single test was good for students irrespective of their backgrounds even if it favoured the well-off.

In the Christian Vellore case (2014), NEET was up for a constitutional challenge. There was no doubt that the MCI had the power to coordinate standards which perforce, including giving instructions and guidelines on admission tests. But, even if this was possible, what stood in the way of NEET was the mighty 11-judge bench in the T.M.A. Pai (2002) case, endorsed by 7-judge bench in Inamdar (2005), that had ruled that unaided and minority institutions are entitled to their own selection; not to mention the St. Stephen’s decision (1991) that affirmed that even an aided minority institution could do further selection of students in terms of the aims of the institution. The T.M.A. Pai formula for unaided and minority institutions was autonomy in matters of admissions. Faced with this precedent, the court decided against NEET (Chief Justice Kabir and Justice Vikramjit Sen, with Justice Anil Dave dissenting). There was much rancour even to a point of making accusations of corruption, not to mention that Kabir and Sen were minority judges and Dave a staunch majority judge.

The MCI worked out a plan to support the dissenting view of Justice Dave. The MCI, with support from the union, resurrected NEET – a single all-India test excluding all others despite the fact that Christian Medical College, Vellore (CMC) (2012) struck down NEET. The dissenting judge (Anil Dave) wanted an all-India test even if the law was to the contrary. Since Kabir and later Sen retired, the path was clear for Dave to get the CMC decision reviewed. It went to a Constitution bench presided over by Justice Dave. It was unsuccessfully argued that Justice Dave recuse himself, as also Justice Goel who had wholly read down T.M.A. Pai. Goel also had litigational connections with BJP politicians. Several eminent lawyers argued that there was no basis for review. On April 11, 2016, the Constitution bench made a curious decision that the review of CMC was to be heard. Without hearing the case on merits, the CMC decision was ‘revoked’. When I pointed out in the April 28 order, ‘revoked’ meant recalled to hear, the Court didn’t budge but feigned that CMC was overruled, when the overruling was not even heard. How on earth can a decision be set aside without a hearing.? But Justice Dave was adamant and the other judges agreed. What was to follow was even more absurd. The NEET All-India exam was fixed with a weekends notice on May 1 for over six lakh students. So what if the NEET syllabus was published in December 2015. At that time, NEET was unconstitutional. Now students were expected to be prepared in three days. It was also suggested that all other exams of states and private minority institutions that were in process or scheduled had to be scrapped. If the legislature or executive had done what the Justice Dave presided 3-judge bench had done, it would have been stayed and struck down. Had any high court behaved in this way, the Supreme Court would have struck down that high court decision like a ton of bricks. What made the decision even more farcical was that a few days earlier in the MP case, the Justice Dave-led bench allowed the MCI Council to argue the state’s case (which it had no business to argue) and even suggested that the arguments in that case (where even a judgment was then not delivered) would suffice for the CMC review as well!

Enter the attorney general

The court proceeded to hear the matter through three judges (Dave, Shiv Kirti Singh and Goel JJ). Soli Sarabji, Sibal, P.P. Rao and I with others protested that the matter had to be heard by a five-judge bench because the supposed overruling had been done by five judges. But the three judges were adamant to hear the matter.

Suddenly, the attorney general appeared to save the state exams. The rumour (confirmed by several Tamil Nadu counsel) was that Chief Minister Jayalalithaa was furious. There was a behind-the-scene threat that her party would disrupt parliament. Tamil Nadu recruits from class 12 in Tamil and English. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana protested that they were protected by Article 371D of the Constitution. Christian College Vellore and Mahatma Gandhi colleges had their own exams. Justice Dave said he wanted Gandhian principles to be made compulsory in admission tests but NEET would stay. I reminded him in court that he had said that if he was Hitler he would impose the Bhagwad Geeta on all schools. I have often wondered why Jesus’s sermon on the mount was not chosen.

Perhaps fearful of rebellion from the states, at one stage the three-judge bench had almost acceded to the request of the states to follow their own criteria and tests. In hearings, the longest time was given to Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. The private institutions also had their own superior exams (take Manipal, the best of the best where years ago Ramdas Pai had not lowered marks to admit his son). Private institutions were given short shrift. But the victory of the states was short lived. Suddenly, the judges did a volte face and decided against the state exams as well. The solicitor general tried to convince the court to allow the states their exams. I protested that if latitude is given to the states it must also be given to minority and other institutions which had constitutional rights in their favour. The reply: “We will hear you if that happens.”

The far reaching result

The Central government is being two-faced. At one level, it supports the MCI to nationalise admission tests. At another level, it is under threat from its own coalition partners not to proceed with this draconian policy. NEET goes to the heart of linguistic federalism. Tamil Nadu and other states argue that their 10+2 allows poor Tamil students to be achievers. Many boards throughout the country are not the same as ISC or CBSE, on which NEET tests are based. CBSE devises these tests. True, they will do an MBBS in English, but we are at pre-admission eligibility. An English medium student has an advantage over a vernacular student. The structure of NEET is such. It was conducted only in English and reluctantly in Hindi.

But there is one more consequence. From the famous Kerala opinion (1958), through so many five and nine judge decisions, both linguistic and religious minority institutions were protected. T.M.A. Pai (2002) finally closed all controversy that these minority institutions were free to devise their own tests. It was a great decision drawing on the spirit of India’s multicultural and multi-religious genius. Look what it says.

“The one billion population of India consists of six main ethnic groups and fifty-two major tribes; six major religions and 6,400 castes and sub-castes; eighteen major languages and 1,600 minor languages and dialects. The essence of secularism in India can best be depicted if a relief map of India is made in mosaic, where the aforesaid one billion people are the small pieces of marble that go into the making of a map. Each person, whatever his/her language, caste, religion has his/her individual identity, which has to be preserved, so that when pieced together it goes to form a depiction with the different geographical features of India(to) produce the beautiful map of India… The variations of the colours as well as different shades of the same colour in a map are the result of these small pieces of different shades and colours of marble, but even when one small piece of marble is removed, the whole map of India would be scarred, and the beauty would be lost.”

The NEET decision augurs disaster. It is clearly arbitrary because the CMC decision (2014) overruling NEET has still not been overruled.

The real impact of NEET, which has been unconstitutionally pushed down the throat of medical education, is that it is anti-poor, anti-minority, anti-federal and anti-constitution. Each state should pass legislation to reverse this decision and seek presidential assent to overcome the Supreme Court decision. Let us see what the Modi government will do. Sit on the fence while the Supreme Court bats for it, probably.

Never has the Supreme Court pressed the agenda of a dissenting judge so forcefully and on such shaky foundations.

Rajeev Dhavan in a senior advocate at the Supreme Court.

A Government of the RSS, by the RSS, for the RSS

Why are liberal souls losing their shirt just because the Prime Minister and his ministerial colleagues all chose to put in an appearance before the RSS chief and his advisers?

Why are liberal souls losing their shirt just because the Prime Minister and his ministerial colleagues all chose to put in an appearance before the sangh chief and his advisers?

File photo of RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat at a sangh event in Nagput

File photo of RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat at a sangh event in Nagput

Fifteen years ago this month, a prime minister of India had travelled to the United States for the annual UN General Assembly mela. During that visit, he found time to attend a Vishwa Hindu Parishad event in Staten Island where he declared himself a swayamsevak — yes, as in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. This was music to the ears of the Nagpur gharana. A prime minister who all along was pretending to have little to do with this Hindu outfit suddenly got into a confessional mood.

Back in New Delhi, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s exuberance did not last long. The conflict between the demands the RSS would make on a prime minister and his constitutional oath was too palpable to permit any kind of meaningful jugalbandi. Though Vajpayee continued to mark his token attendance at the annual guru dakshina rites, he was not afraid to antagonise the Nagpur crowd. After the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, it was simply not possible for Vajpayee to maintain any civilised conversation with these comrades among the swayamsevaks. The gurus never forgave Vajpayee for wanting to draw outside the lines.

And, again, 10 years ago, July 2005 to be precise, three designated gurus of the Nagpur gharana travelled to Delhi to tell the then BJP president, LK Advani, to put in his papers. Advani had committed the solecism of saying something vaguely in praise of Muhammad Ali Jinnah. All the top leaders of the BJP held their collective peace as the “unknown, unelected, unaccountable” Nagpur-empowered busybodies roughed up Advani as if he was just a taluka-level politician. Advani was rendered hors de combat. By the end of the year, he was gone as the party president.

The Nagpur bosses wanted to reaffirm the first principle: No BJP leader would be allowed any deviation. They had had enough of Vajpayee and his liberal tantrums.

Last week, it was this very first principle that was re-asserted when the Sarsanghchalak summoned Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ministers. Well, if you are a swayamsevak, you do respond to summons from the superior in the hierarchy. Period. That is the code of the saffron brotherhood. Admitted, Sushma Swaraj is not an RSS bhakt. Nor is Arun Jaitley. Unless, he has managed to keep this fact away from his “moderate and decent” friends in Delhi. But neither of them had any choice.

Open secret

Why are liberal souls losing their shirt just because the Prime Minister and his ministerial colleagues all chose to put in an appearance before the RSS chief and his advisers? After all, the Modi-RSS connection is not new.

It was no secret that it was the RSS’s unequivocal endorsement of Modi that proved decisive in the BJP making him its prime ministerial mascot. Nor was the RSS’s involvement on behalf of Modi in the 2014 electoral process a secret affair. It was open and fairly well documented.

From his Gujarat days, Modi has written the blue book on how to look after the RSS and its functionaries. Modi is smarter – which is not the same thing as being wiser – than Vajpayee. He has shrewdly sized up the small men and their small needs.

To be fair, Modi never kept anyone in the dark about his RSS links. Yet, if the best and the brightest among the New Delhi-based intellectuals and other ‘thought leaders’ chose to be taken in by the ‘vikas’ mantra, it is their problem – not Modi’s.

Instead of having buyer’s regret, every moderate voice should welcome the RSS’s decision to come out of the closet.  There is no dark side to it.

Look at what has already happened: The RSS, which has arrogated to itself the role of the sole arbiter of moral values, is now wasting its breath on explaining the excesses and aberrations of the BJP chief ministers – Shivraj Singh Chouhan in Madhya Pradesh and Vasundhara Raje in Rajasthan. It would be instructive to find out how that fly-by-night entrepreneur, Lalit Modi, is described in the morning shakha meetings in Jaipur. Just as it would be revealing to know what explanation the swayamsevaks in Bhopal offered regarding the horror of a scandal called Vyapam.

Indeed, none seems to have noticed that the RSS has reduced itself to being a BJP spokesperson.

Its two other chief ministers, in Haryana and Maharashtra — both proud products of the Sangh brain-washing factory system — have turned out to be poor advertisements for good governance or for the RSS brand. Apart from exhibiting a new willingness to provoke – Manohar Lal Khattar’s absurd infatuation with Baba Ramdev and Devendra Fadnavis’s petty preoccupations with bans — these two have hardly enhanced the reputation of the RSS.

Anti-democratic argument

More interestingly, BJP apologists have cockily explained Modi and his ministers’ attendance at the Sangh conclave as not very dissimilar to some Congress ministers and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s response to the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council. Never mind that the NAC was a government-constituted, gazetted body;  it has now been easily done away with. Never mind that Sonia Gandhi is the head of a legally recognised political party, which enters the electoral fray with its own symbol. Yet any suggestion of a moral equivalence between Sonia Gandhi and Mohan Bhagwat should not be resented.

Perhaps, it should even be a matter of some satisfaction that the RSS has come out of its bogus pretence of being just a cultural organisation. The democratic forces should welcome it and demand that it should be brought within the ambit of the Right-to-Information regime. Nonetheless, a matter of grave concern is the new attempt aimed at intellectual hegemony. For instance, the culture minister in the Modi government, Mahesh Sharma, a black-belt saffronite, has argued that by voting for Modi and the BJP, the voters have given a mandate for “saffronisation” of education, culture and other institutions. With just 31% of the votes, the Modi sarkar would like to believe that it has been given a licence to operationalise the RSS agenda.

This is an anti-democratic argument and is laced with morally unpleasant smells. Whatever obedience the Prime Minister and his ministers may choose to render to the Sarsanghchalak, they need to be reminded that they are still governed and bound by something called the Constitution of India. India is still a constitutional democracy and its rulers, irrespective of the number of seats they have in the Lok Sabha, are still answerable to a robust Parliament and an independent judiciary.

Harish Khare is Editor-in-Chief of The Tribune

Courtesy: The Tribune

Get Wired 13/8: CBI Not Keen to Probe DMAT Scam, BJP Workers Pose as Census Officials, and More

CBI says it lacks manpower to probe DMAT scam

CBI HQThe CBI has expressed its inability to probe a scam linked to Vyapam stating that they lack the manpower to investigate the connected issue. In response to a petition by Anand Rai, the whistleblower behind Vyapam, the CBI said “In its scope and depth, the DMAT (Madhya Pradesh Dental and Medical Admission Test) scam appears to be many times more than the Vyapam scam… It is humbly submitted that the CBI is finding it extremely hard and almost impossible to cope with the extent of cases already being investigated…due to scarcity of resources, particularly human resource.”  The CBI said 348 posts were currently vacant.

BJP workers posed as census officials in Muslim areas

On Wednesday, five BJP women’s wing activists were arrested in a Muslim dominated area of Bengaluru after they were accused of trying to steal the voter ID cards of residents. The activists told the police that they were campaigning for the upcoming civic polls scheduled for August 22. Association for Protection of Civil Rights (APCR) member R Khaleemulla, said, “Names of Muslims, other minorities and SCs had gone missing from the electoral rolls during the last Assembly and Lok Sabha polls as well.”

Health Ministry not committed to tackling corruption cases at AIIMS

AIIMSThe Centre For Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) had claimed that the ministry was siting on 11 pending corruption cases at AIIMS in a petition to the Delhi High Court earlier this month. The Parliamentary standing committee on Health and Family welfare has asked the Health Ministry to ensure “expeditious investigations into all the corruption cases at AIIMS”, in its 87th report tabled in Parliament last week. The committee has also demanded a status report from the Ministry in three months. The committee chaired by the BSP’s Satish Chandra Mishra, pointed out that autonomy for the medical institute should not translate to autonomy for the director resulting in the “freedom from observance of prescribed rules, regulations and procedures”.

Naga interlocutor says ceasefire rules will not be changed

RN Ravi, the Centre’s interlocutor, has written to Union Home Secretary L C Goyal in response to queries the Army had on the implications of the Naga peace deal.  Ravi’s response reportedly indicated that there would be no change in the ground rules of the ceasefire agreement. The ceasefire ground rules dictate designated camps where all armed cadres of the outfit will be present, and there will be no movement in uniform and with arms outside these camps. Camps will not be located in populated areas or near highways, Army posts or police stations. Further, the movement of NSCN (IM) cadres from one camp to another will be carried out only with intimation to the security forces.

Railways change accounting prices to attract private capital

The Indian Railways has accelerated their change in accounting reforms in an attempt to attract private investors. The first attempt to shift from the cash flow system to accrual accounting has been made in Ajmer. The Bibek Debroy committee had suggested that the railways undertake accounting reforms if it wanted investment in the sector. The step is likely to lead to more investor confidence in the railways, as it makes its finances more transparent and covers assets and liabilities.

Pearson sells Economist stake

Pearson has agreed to sell its stake in the 172-year-old Economist magazine in a £469 million ($731 million) deal with Exor SpA. This follows the sale of Financial Times, last month to Japan’s Nikkei Inc. The Agnelli family owned Exor investment company that controls car maker Fiat Chrysler, paid £227.5 million for 27.8% of The Economist Group’s ordinary shares and £59.5 million for all of the B special share. The Economist Group will buy Pearson’s remaining ordinary shares for £182 million, Pearson said on Wednesday in a statement. This deal brings an effective end to Pearson’s role in the news publishing business after more than 50 years.

 

44 killed due to blasts in China’s port Tianjin

Two huge explosions occurred at an industrial area in the northeast Chinese port city of Tianjin, killing at least 44 people, including a dozen fire fighters, officials and state media said on Thursday. At least 520 people were injured, according to sources. The exact cause of the blasts was unknown. Industrial accidents are not uncommon in China. Last year, a blast at an auto parts factory in eastern China killed 75 people when a room filled with metal dust exploded.

 

Wkileaks promises 100,00 dollar reward to anyone who leaks EU-US trade deal

The organization has promised a 100,00 dollar reward to anyone who can provide the public with a copy of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, that is currently being negotiated between the European Union and the United States. The reward is to be financed by a crowdsourcing effort by the organization. Wikileaks has already raised more than 55,000 euros in donations — including pledges by the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, and Daniel Ellsberg, the military analyst who leaked top secret documents during the Vietnam War. TTIP seeks to enhance market access through the elimination of barriers to trade and investment in areas such as the environment, labor, and intellectual property.

Yes, the GST Delay is Hurting Growth, but Modi Has as Much to Answer For as Sonia

Finance minister Arun Jaitley has charged the opposition, especially the Congress, with deliberately hurting economic growth by blocking the GST bill for “purely political reasons”. Jaitley has further asserted that the Goods and Services Tax (GST) is getting blocked largely because of the obduracy of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi. What is implied is other senior Congress leaders want the GST legislation to be passed.

Ironically, every charge Jaitley has made is tantamount to holding a mirror to himself and to his supreme leader Narendra Modi.

A little flashback

There has always existed a broad political consensus over the GST legislation. It got stuck in recent years because of the sheer obstinacy of Modi who, as Chief Minister of Gujarat, blocked the Centre’s efforts in this direction for political ends. It is an open secret that the BJP disrupted several sessions of Parliament in 2011 because cases of terror involving extremist Hindutva elements were coming to the fore. For the Sangh Parivar, the greater national interest then was to somehow force the Centre to dilute the probe into Hindutva terror cases. GST wouldn’t have figured anywhere near that paramount interest of the Parivar.

Jaitley has argued that precious economic growth is being sacrificed because of the delay in the implementation of GST. It is true that a robust, single GST replacing the myriad cascading state-level taxes that currently exist, will reduce the overall tax rate, create a common market and reduce inflation. There is an estimate that the implementation of a proper GST could boost GDP by up to 2 percentage points a year.Today, the large number of varying and cascading taxes result in a total indirect tax incidence of close to 30% for both the Centre and states taken together. A single GST at 18-20% could reduce indirect tax levels by a full 10 percentage points. That would undoubtedly serve as a big boost for GDP growth.

If this is true, then the BJP must first explain why it allowed the nation to sacrifice 2 percentage points of additional GDP over the last 4 to 5 years. If the BJP had cooperated with the Manmohan Singh government, the GST would have been operational by 2012. Now it is scheduled to kick off only by April 2016, if everything goes right in Parliament.

Jaitley says this is the biggest tax reform since India got independence. Indeed, if this was so critical to national interest, why did the then Gujarat CM, Narendra Modi sacrifice this measure on the altar of narrow Parivar politics? The BJP had a lot to answer for even as their leaders present themselves today as great upholders of India’s economic interest.

Arrogance on land issue

Another important reason for the delay of GST has been the manner in which the NDA aggressively, even arrogantly, sought to push the highly contentious Land Acquisition Bill down the opposition’s throat.

The land acquisition issue created so much bitterness in the relations between the BJP and the opposition that its shadow fell on other important parliamentary legislative business such as the GST. If Modi and Jaitley had referred the land bill to the states last year itself, the GST would have had a much smoother passage. This was a huge error of judgement on Modi’s part and the NDA must accept responsibility for this mismanagement of the legislative business in Parliament. But then, with 282 seats in the Lok Sabha, the BJP finds it difficult to show some humility when mistakes are made.

This lack of humility is so starkly visible in Modi’s recent speeches in Bihar, where he brazenly gives a clean chit to the BJP Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, describing them as development messiahs in the face of grave charges faced by them in the Vyapam and Lalit Modi scams.

The Prime Minister virtually gave a clean chit to Shivraj Chouhan even as the CBI, under the Supreme Court’s monitoring, goes about filing fresh criminal cases in the Vyapam case. If the PM gives a clean chit even before the CBI has examined the role of the accused officials who had worked closely with Chouhan, what signal is he sending?

While it accuses the opposition of disrupting Parliament and blocking development, the BJP leadership has no qualms about breaking established rules of governance. Partly, it is this hubris displayed by the ruling party which has led the opposition to harden its position on bipartisan matters like the GST legislation. Jaitley cannot blame the opposition alone and strike a posture of injured innocence on behalf of his party. The NDA cannot escape responsibility for the way Parliament is being managed.

Vat to do about liquor

The BJP is still trying work out a consensus on the GST bill as only three days of Parliament work remain. The opposition is likely to come around if the government agrees to some substantive changes. The Congress wants the single GST rate to be much lower, at 18%. The NDA bill seems to suggest a much higher GST rate of about 25% to 27% to start with. A rate as high as 25% to 27% will hardly act as a big booster for economic growth that the Finance Minister is talking about.

The GST rate can be kept at a lower level only if states agree to bring two critical sectors, liquor and petroleum, within the GST net. Both these sectors are cash cows for states, as recently seen in the way sales tax on petroleum has been hiked by many of them. If included in GST, states will not have flexibility to raise the tax rate on petro products. As for liquor, it is a big generator of black money for the funding of regional parties. One doesn’t know whether Tamil Nadu CM Jayalalitha will agree to bringing liquor within the GST net. Modi and Jaitley, inspite of their rhetoric on curbing black money, are not averse to giving states leeway on liquor. The Congress is testing the BJP on this. There are too many complexities yet unresolved. It remains to be seen how the BJP manages these contradictions in the next few days.