NEW DELHI // Following a number of recent suspicious deaths, India’s supreme court has ordered a federal investigation into a multimillion-rupee scam involving college admissions and government recruitments in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
The court on Thursday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the corruption scandal as well as the unexplained deaths of dozens of witnesses and suspects linked to the scam.
The scandal has rocked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Madhya Pradesh as well as prime minister Narendra Modi’s federal government. Opposition politicians have called for the resignation of Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Madhya Pradesh chief minister.
But despite the dents to his government’s image, Mr Chouhan has refused to resign.
He welcomed the supreme court’s announcement of the CBI investigation.
“I appeal to the CBI to start the probe at the earliest and bring out the truth,” Mr Chouhan said.
The scam has come to be known by the Hindi acronym Vyapam, after the Vyavasayik Pariksha Mandal, a state government body that holds entrance exams for state-run educational institutions as well as government jobs in Madhya Pradesh.
Although irregularities with the Vyapam exams have been reported for more than a decade, the scam formally surfaced in 2013, when Madhya Pradesh police arrested 18 people who, for a fee, had impersonated candidates in a medical college examination.
Subsequent arrests revealed that candidates had bribed politicians and state officials to procure high rankings in these exams.
As the police investigation progressed, more than 2,000 people were arrested – including parents and students, a racketeer who organised the scam, and a former state education minister, Laxmikant Sharma.
A high ranking in the entrance exam to undergraduate medical colleges cost roughly 1.5 million rupees (Dh86,900), according to media reports.
At the postgraduate level, the rate ballooned to 5 million rupees.
But the scandal has gained new momentum after a spate of deaths of people related to the police investigation over the past two months.
Politicians from the opposition Congress party have connected 49 deaths to the scam. Anand Rai, a doctor and activist in Madhya Pradesh who has emerged as the main whistle-blower from within the medical establishment, said on Tuesday that 10 deaths occurred in “suspicious circumstances” and that the remainder may be “a matter of coincidence”.
Among the most high-profile of these deaths is that of Akshay Singh, a television journalist who was found dead on July 4. He was covering the scam at the time of his death.
The next day, a dean of a Madhya Pradesh medical college was discovered dead in his hotel room in New Delhi.
Autopsy reports in most of these deaths have been inconclusive or have yet to be released.
But the police’s decision to reopen an old case – that of Namrata Damor, who was found dead near a railway line in Madhya Pradesh in 2012 – has revealed that, after an initial post-mortem indicated “homicidal ... violent asphyxia” as the cause of death, a subsequent report changed the conclusion to suicide without due basis in fact.
Singh had been looking into Damor’s death when he died earlier this week.
Mr Chouhan’s government has been accused of conspiracy to cover up the scam and protect top state politicians, including Madhya Pradesh’s federally appointed governor, Ram Naresh Yadav.
Under pressure, the Madhya Pradesh government on Tuesday petitioned the state’s high court to allow the CBI to take over the investigation from the police.
On Wednesday, however, the high court deferred hearing the plea, contending that the supreme court was due to hear similar petitions on Thursday from Mr Rai and others.
The move drew sharp criticism from the supreme court.
“Instead of taking a decision, the Madhya Pradesh high court washed its hands of it and put the ball in our court,” the three-judge bench, led by India’s chief justice H L Dattu, said.
The bench also instructed the state and federal governments to respond to a plea to remove Mr Yadav, the state’s governor. According to the Indian constitution, governors enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution until the federal government removes them from their post.
The Congress used the supreme court order to pile pressure on Mr Chouhan. “The message from the supreme court is clear,” said Tom Vadakkan, a spokesman. “Shivraj Chouhan must step down for a proper investigation.”
However, Mr Rai is concerned that political forces might influence the CBI investigigation.
“It will only help if the supreme court monitored the probe, not if the CBI investigates this on its own,” he said.
“The government at both the [federal level] and the state is ruled by the BJP.”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
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