New Delhi : Citing documents, the Congress party on Wednesday changed gears and levelled charges against Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, BJP leaders Prabhat Jha, Anil Dave (both Rajya Sabha members) and RSS leader Suresh Soni, accusing them of being the direct beneficiaries of the cash generated in the Vyapam corruption.
”We have documents from the income tax department analyzing the expenses incurred by one of the accused Sudhir Sharma, and he has incurred expenses for air tickets and cash payments for all these leaders,” said Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala to unfold yet another dimension of this multi-layered scam.
Most of these incriminating documents have been unearthed by the Income Tax Department from the premises of the prime player in Vyapam scam, Sudhir Sharma, a mining baron who is now cooling heels in a jail in Indore. Sudhir happened to be an aide of former minister in CM Shivraj Chauhan’s Cabinet, Laxmikant Sharma, who too has been named as an accused in the Vyapam scam.
The documents have revealed that Sudhir Sharma regularly received lakhs in cash from two colleges linked to the Vyapam scam. That money, tax officials claimed, “was passed onto a Madhya Pradesh minister’s aide on the same day”.
Interestingly, even some Congress leaders have been named in the incriminating documents unearthed by the Income Tax Department. But unmindful of the revelation, the Congress has demanded that Chauhan should either resign or be sacked to ensure a fair probe into the scam by the CBI. Surjewala charged that Chauhan’s cover-up bid is evident from his statement in the state legislature that there have been over 1,000 fake appointments out of the
1.42 lakh job appointments in the state during his tenure. ‘‘The failure to unearth even one such fake person and punish the guilty so far after such a damning admission itself makes Chauhan liable for dismissal,” he added.
