Vyapam scam: No breather for Shivraj Singh Chouhan as Arun Jaitley seeks a fair probe

NEW DELHI: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan may be disappointed if he expects the central government to back him in the Vyapam scam as it did Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje in Lalitgate.

As the body count of witnesses in the case piled up over the weekend, Union minister for information and broadcasting Arun Jaitley said: “Since various issues are being raised with regard to the circumstances of his (TV journalist Akshay Singh) death, it would be important that a very fair inquiry is held so that all doubts are put to rest,” Jaitley said.

Even Chouhan himself had to concede that the high court-ordered probe into the case would include the death of several people connected with the scam.

The significant point to note, however, is that while the BJP and the government seemed to be backing Raje to the hilt, Chouhan’s case has been held to be different. In March, former MP CM Digvijaya Singh, along with a delegation of Congressmen from the state, met PM Modi and handed over some documents connected with the case. Nothing much happened thereafter as the case is under the supervision of the HC, but the fact that the delegation was entertained by the PM was significant.

As witnesses continued to die last week, BJP general secretary and minister in Chouhan’s government, Kailash Vijayvargiya, who owes his career to party president Amit Shah, called for a detailed investigation into the deaths, supervised by the courts. “These deaths can become an aspect of the total investigation into the case,” he had told ET. Allegations against Chouhan and close members of his family in the scam have been making the rounds for some time.