The opposition Congress walked out of the Madhya Pradesh Assembly on Wednesday after Speaker Sitasharan Sharma did not permit them to counter Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s Motion of Thanks on Governor Ram Naresh Yadav’s address to the 14th Vidhan Sabha.
On Saturday, Opposition Leader Satyadev Katare demanded a CBI probe on the scams in the Professional Examination Board which conducts recruitment tests for public services and entrance exams for professional courses.
When the assembly reconvened on Wednesday, Mr. Chouhan replied that 1000 persons out of the 1.47 lakh recruits to various government departments since 2007 were found to have used fraudulent means. "The scam was unearthed in 2009 and we immediately ordered a probe into it and asked the concerned authorities to look into it (appointments) since 2006. The Special Task Force (STF) enquiry is one of the best in the country and is above suspicion. No guilty persons will be spared however high up they are," he said.
The state’s Directorate of Medical Education has cracked the whip on 153 students, some of whom have already graduated, who passed the entrance exams using proxy exam writers. Those currently in college have been suspended and the rest are facing prosecution.
On January 22, the Jabalpur High Court will hear more than 100 petitions on the PEB scam.
The Motion of Thanks and the supplementary budget of Rs 7,071.73 crore, which includes a power tariff subsidy of Rs. 600 crores, were passed by the house. Pawai MLA Mukesh Nayak of the Congress pointed out that the state has lost control over finances, “The Comptroller and Auditor General has exposed that in 2012 you’ll (the government) have made Rs. 9000 crores of wasteful expenditure,” he said.
