Vyapam's audit report shows wide gap in sanctioned and actual expenditure

The audit report of the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board, or Vyapam as it is popularly known, for the year 2011-12, showed that there was a huge difference between its sanctioned income and expenditure and actuals, an RTI query has revealed.

The audit report states that in 2011-12, the sanctioned income of the board was Rs. 66.97 crore and the sanctioned expenditure Rs. 44.12 crore . However, the actual income was stated to be Rs. 98.30 crore and the actual expenditure Rs. 28.37 crore.

The difference between actual income and sanctioned income comes to Rs. 31.34 crore while the difference between sanctioned expenditure and actual expenditure was Rs. 15.74 crore. It was not clear how this major discrepancy came about.

"The huge difference between sanctioned income-expenditure and actual income-expenditure of the board indicates that while preparing the budget correct estimation with regard to the examinations conducted in the year of audit (2011-12) was not done keeping in mind the previous year's income and expenditure," the audit report said.

The report said correct estimations of the figures at the time of preparing the budget should be made.

The audit report was obtained by activist Ajay Dubey through an RTI application in January 2016 from the MP Professional Examination Board.

The RTI application also revealed that audit for the year 2012-13 was completed in September 2015. But audit report has still not been made available to the board.

Madhya Pradesh has been mired in the Vyapam scam for years, but the irregularities came to light when 20 people were arrested in 2013 for impersonating candidates appearing for the 2009 medical entrance examination.

More than 45 people associated with the Vyapam scam have died - mostly under mysterious circumstances. Following the chain of deaths, the Supreme Court last July directed the CBI to investigate not just the Vyapam scam but also the deaths related to it.

The most recent death was of retired Indian Forest Service officer Vijay Bahadur Singh, whose body was found close to a railway track near Odisha's Belpahad station on October 15, 2015. He was travelling by the Puri-Jodhpur Express. The CBI has started probing this death as well. Singh acted as an observer in two Vyapam recruitment tests.

Former Madhya Pradesh minister Lakshmikant Sharma, one of the main accused in the Vyapam scam, was released from jail on December 20, 2015, following bail granted by a court. Another Vyapam scam accused, former officer on special duty Dhanraj Yadav, was released from jail on December 19, 2015, after he too got bail from a court.

(Sidhartha Dutta can be contacted at sidhartha.d@ians.in)