New Delhi: Since its commencement in 1997, The Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, (or Vyapam as it is popularly known), conducted admission tests for National Law Institute University (NLIU), enlisted only the roll numbers of their merit students and thus eliminated their names from its list during 2001-07, the reply to an RTI query says.
Whistleblower Ajay Dubey says that this has been done in order to safeguard the interest of beneficiaries.
The merit list of pre-BA.LLB (Hons) entrance test from 2000 to 2007, procured through RTI application in November by Ajay Dubey from the MP Professional Examination Board, evinces that in the year 2000, the names of the candidates along with their roll numbers were afore mentioned. But from 2001 till 2007, the board removed the names of the candidates, thus only disclosing their roll numbers, the RTI reply said.
"Admission tests for NLIU were ordained by Vyapam till 2007. From 2008 onwards, the admission test for the law institute started regulating within the frame of Common Law Admission Test (CLAT). In order to veil the identities of selected candidates who were recommended by influential people, they eliminated the names of the candidates from the merit list after 2000, though earlier, the practice of putting the names of the candidates with their father's name prevailed," Dubey says.
Meanwhile, an expeditious investigation was called by the MP government in order to scrutinize the inflated travel expenses by experts hired by the state's Professional Examination Board or Vyapam for an examination held in 2006-07.
Two months earlier, the reprinting of 200,000 answer sheets for the Women and Child Development elicited a loss of Rs.262,350 which raised an objection by the Local Fund Audit.
Since 1970, there have been more than 1000 financial aberrations in Vyapam which raised further objections by the state's audit teams.
Madhya Pradesh has been mired in the Vyapam scam for years, but the irregularities eventually came to notice when 20 people were accused and arrested in 2013, for impersonating candidates who appeared in the medical entrance examination, 2009.
The event was followed by the chain of deaths of forty-eight people who were affiliated with the Vyapam scam. This directed an investigation by CBI.
An Indian Forest Service officer, Vijay Bahadur Singh was recently found to be dead. He was traveling by the Puri-Jodhpur Express and his body was eventually found close to a railway track near Odisha's Belpahad station on October 15. The CBI has started probing this death as well.
(With inputs from agencies)