The Congress’s efforts to get Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan indicted in the Vyapam scam took a new turn on Wednesday with party leaders meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi here and urging him to ask Mr. Chouhan to step down.
Digvijay Singh, Kamal Nath, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kapil Sibal met Mr. Modi and submitted a copy of the “original excel sheet” allegedly linking Mr. Chouhan to the scam, along with a copy of the purportedly tampered excel sheet which the special task force investigating the scam had filed before the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
Terming the scam “one of the biggest recruitments/appointments racket involving the highest levels of government,” the delegation said in a letter to Mr. Modi that Mr. Chouhan should be asked to step down from his post in the interest of a fair and impartial inquiry in public interest.
“This becomes crucial as there is a clear case of tampering with the evidence by the investigating agency working under him, which seems to benefit him directly,” it said.
The four leaders, along with senior Supreme Court lawyer Vivek Tankha, told Mr. Modi that they had “verified from authenticated IT experts/labs” that the excel sheet filed with Mr. Singh’s affidavit was indeed the original one and “what has been filed before the court is a tampered version.” The original document, the delegation told Mr. Modi, “clearly shows [Mr. Chouhan] as a sponsor of as many as 48 beneficiaries.”
One of the members of the delegation told The Hindu that the original excel sheet, recovered from the computer of one of the main accused, had been authored at 4.20 p.m., while the tampered one had a time stamp of 8.50 p.m.
The delegation also complained about the investigation being carried out by the task force.
