The Congress party on Wednesday said the alleged kingpin of Vyapam scam, Sudhir Sharma, shared money with top BJP and RSS leaders, including RSS Sarsanghchalak Suresh Soni and union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
"Vypam's ill-gotten money soiled in the blood of innocents was shared by certain BJP-RSS leaders," Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said at a press conference here.
Displaying several documents, Surjewala claimed Vyapam scam kingpin Sudhir Sharma, along with former Madhya Pradesh minister Lakshmikant Sharma, shared the money they made from the racket with Pradhan, Soni, BJP's Rajya Sabha member Anil Dave, BJP vice president Prabhat Jha and his sons Tushmul Jha and A. Jha.
The house of Sudhir Sharma, the head of VNS Group of Institutions (where most of the admissions to MBBS and other categories are made through Vyapam), was raided by the Income Tax department in 2011.
The Annexure A-9 of the documents released by the Congress on Wednesday has a copy of the report prepared by the Income Tax department on that raid.
The report said: "Various evidences collected during search operations and post search enquiries clearly show that the assessee group is engaged in regular and systematic payment of illegal gratification to various public servants and politicians."
"Evidences show that not only the payments are being made in cash but the expenditure on air travel, taxi fare and the stay of politicians is also being borne by the assessee group," it added.
"Payment of illegal gratification, particularly to the officials of the regulatory authorities like IBM, DGMS, Forest Deptt, Environment Deptt, District Collector, Police Deptt, etc. clearly indicate that these payments have been made so that unaccounted production and sale of minerals continued smoothly and unabated," it stated.
The Congress has demanded resignation of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas Dharmendra Pradhan, and action against Prabhat Jha.
"We demand the immediate resignation of Chouhan and Dharmendra Pradhan and action against Prabhat Jha and others," the Congress leader added.
"No independent, fair, free and impartial investigation to find the kingpin and the guilty in the Vyapam scam is possible until Shivraj Singh Chouhan is removed as chief minister of Madhya Pradesh," Surjewala said.
The other annexures of the documents reveal that the chief minister had misled the state legislature by giving misleading information about fake candidates, cancellation of their candidature and registration of FIRs, the Congress leader said.
It also mentioned that the chief minister had replied to the Vidhan Sabha on February 23, 2012, that 'photographs and signatures' of all the fake Vyapam candidates were being verified by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Hyderabad.
However, a reply to an RTI query revealed that no such documents were received by the central laboratories in Hyderabad or Chandigarh, the Congress leader said.
