Madhya Pradesh state cabinet on Friday decided to rename Professional Examination Board (PEB) (Hindi acronym Vyapam) as Karamchari Chayan Board (Employees Selection Board) nine years after multilayered Vyapam Scam was busted by state Special Task Force of police. Home minister Narottam Mishra said, “The cabinet has now renamed PEB and now it will be under General Administration Department (GAD).”
PEB is the sole agency for conducting recruitment exams for the appointment of class 3 employees of all the government departments. An officer requesting anonymity said, “The proposal of changing the name is pending since 2015. The Congress-led state government has also moved a proposal of ending Vyapam and introduced a new recruitment board. The state government has finalised the draft after two recruitment exams conducted by PEB in March was cancelled due to complaint of irregularities in probable selected list of candidates.”
Earlier, it was under the technical education department but now GAD will head the board, he added. Vyapam earned a bad name in 2013 after a multilayered scam came to light in which students cleared various entrance and recruitment exams by using unfair means.
In 2013, July Indore Police arrested 20 impersonators who appeared for the medical entrance examination to help undeserving candidates secure high ranks. The cheating net also involved a clique of politicians and bureaucrats that facilitated the fraud in exchange for bribes, according to investigators. The CBI took over the case in 2015. In all, 3,500 people were made accused by the CBI in 154 different cases.
