By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net,
Bhopal: For the first time in the history of India, Madhya Pradesh’s incumbent governor, the statutory head of a province, has reportedly stepped down after an FIR was filed against him in connection with charges of corruption in a professional exam scam.
Governor Ram Naresh Yadav has reportedly quit his post late in the evening but there was no official communique in this regard. Media, especially several news channels, quoted sources in Union Home Ministry at Delhi, about how Yadav has been asked to put in papers. But top Governor House officials here maintained he has not resigned.
Madhya Pradesh Governor Ram Naresh Yadav (File photo)
The Union Home Ministry reportedly told him to quit because of his connection with the scam in the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB). The developments come a day after the FIR was registered by the Special Task Force (STF), probing the Professional Examination Board scam, on the charge of recommending five candidates for selection as forest guard to the Board in 2012.
In a related development, it has been learnt that Yadav has sought an appointment with President Pranab Mukherjee. And, in another related development, Mizoram Governor Aziz Qureshi has held a closed door meeting with Yadav for nearly 35 minutes on Wednesday.
“It was a courtesy meeting,” source said but divulged no other details.
Qureshi, who is a Bhopal resident, had opposed a reported directive to resign as Uttarakhand’s governor after the BJP-led NDA government came to power at the Centre and later filed a petition in the Supreme Court on the issue. Later, he was transferred to Mizoram as Governor.
According to STF sources, Yadav’s name appeared in an excel sheet recovered from former PEB system analyst Nitin Mahindra. The names of other accused in the fresh FIR includes four PEB officials, who are already in jail, former state minister Laxmikant Sharma and mining baron Sudhir Sharma, who is also in jail, STF sources said.
The governor faces an assortment of charges under IPC including Section 420 (cheating) and Prevention of Corruption Act. An appointee of the previous UPA government at the Centre, 88-year-old Yadav, was expected to continue in office till September 2015.
The MPPEB scam is a massive admission and recruitment scandal involving politicians and senior officials and the Governor’s role in it had come under the scanner since the arrest of his Officer on Special Duty (OSD) Dhanraj Yadav in the MPPEB’s Pre-Medical Test (PMT). His son Shailesh Yadav’s name too had cropped up during the investigation when an accused had alleged he was paid money for recruitment of contractual teachers.
Yadav had allegedly recommended names of five candidates for recruitment as forest guards to the top officials of MPPEB which conducted the examination. Some of these candidates had cracked the examination allegedly by adopting unfair means, the officer said.
The Governor’s departure would now lend substance to the Congress charges against Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), making him more vulnerable.
Many in Madhya Pradesh saw the upheaval coming when the Congress made the latest revelations about the scam of the decade on the eve of the state Budget session. The Congress was gunning for Chouhan, who rejected demands for his resignation.
The Congress had claimed that government machinery was misused to shield Chouhan and family while implicating senior party colleagues such as Uma Bharti and the Governor. Bharti, now a minister at the Centre, had visited the Governor following the Congress’ expose. Sources said, her name is also expected to figure in the FIR but there was no official confirmation forthcoming. The government is also trying to save the RSS leaders who featured in the scam, the Congress had said.
Bharti had asked for a CBI inquiry into the matter. Chouhan has persistently refused to hand the enquiry to the CBI. The STF after all is the state government’s handmaid, says the Opposition.
Over 1,800 people are behind bars in the scam which took place in the MPPEB that conducts various examinations for admissions and recruitment to different courses and government jobs. The scam saw candidates rig examinations through scamsters, who employed impostors to write test papers, manipulated sitting arrangements and even supplied forged answer sheets.
Meanwhile, for the first time in the history of Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly, opposition members questioned integrity of Governor when he was about to address the House on first day of budget session on February 18. Opposition Congress MLAs staged a walked-out boycotting Yadav’s address accusing him and his family of corruption in MPPEB scam.
As a result, the governor did not even read the two paragraphs. He just read the first and last lines of his speech, and concluded the formality in less than a minute. The speaker then adjourned the assembly. Thus, Yadav, a veteran Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh who was appointed by erstwhile UPA government, was humiliated by his own party MLAs.