Cong drags BJP, RSS leaders into Vyapam

The Congress on Wednesday released documents alleging that several top BJP and RSS leaders had enjoyed hospitality offered by Sudhir Sharma, a mining baron arrested for his alleged involvement in the Vyapam scam.

The top BJP and RSS functionaries included Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and party MPs Prabhat Jha and Anil Dave as well as top RSS leader Suresh Soni, legislators in Madhya Pradesh and members of the BJP’s student wing, the ABVP.

Pradhan is mentioned in a report of the Income Tax Department as having travelled on an air ticket purchased by Sudhir Sharma’s company.

Rajya Sabha MP Jha and his two sons have also been mentioned several times in the report as having availed of Sharma’s hospitality.

The principal opposition party demanded that Pradhan and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan be sacked in order to ensure an impartial probe into the scam.

The scam relates to recruitment and admission through the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, popularly referred to as Vyapam, its Hindi acronym.

Releasing a big tranche of documents obtained through different RTI petitions, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh and party spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala asserted that the only appropriate course of action under the circumstances is a Supreme Court-monitored CBI probe and the removal of people in authority who can influence the probe.

“It is absolutely imperative that the Supreme Court monitors this probe. We are saying this because we have seen how criminal cases tend to disappear in the case of powerful BJP leaders such as Amit Shah. We have also seen how witnesses are being influenced in other important criminal investigations,” Surjewala said.

The most damaging document was an internal assessment report prepared by the Income Tax Department which showed that Pradhan had travelled by air from Bhopal to Delhi.

For instance, he travelled from Bhopal to Delhi on May 21, 2010 on an air ticket that cost ₹6,807. The detail was found in an Excel sheet named “ticket details” present in the hard disk seized from Sudhir Sharma’s MP Nagar premises.

Later, Pradhan is mentioned again as having travelled between the two cities at the same cost. Suresh Soni travelled from Dehradun to Delhi on August 12, 2010 on a ticket that cost ₹10,039. Prabhat Jha is shown travelling several times on tickets for which the payment seemed to have been made by Sudhir Sharma.

“During the course of the survey, it was found that Sudhir Sharma has made huge payments in cash on account of air tickets in the name of Suresh Soni, Uttam Swamy, Sanjay Saraf, Prabhat Jha, Ayatan Jha, Tushmul Jha (sons of Prabhat Jha), Abhay Mahajan, Anand Dubey etc,” the report said. It also showed frequent phone exchanges between Sudhir Sharma and BJP functionaries.

According to the Congress spokespersons, it cannot be a coincidence that top level BJP functionaries are linked to a mining baron who headed the VNS Group of Institutions, where most of the admissions to MBBS and other categories were made through Vyapam.