Hindu Jagran Manch member Abhay Chopra was instrumental in the arrest of Vyapam’s Controller of Examination, besides playing a role in exposing what is popularly called the DMAT (Dental Medical Admissions Test) scam in Madhya Pradesh. He speaks to Scroll.in about how his daughter’s plight led him to file Public Interest Litigations, why the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister is wrong in claiming to be the whistle-blower in the Vyapam scam, and the need to discontinue the gharwapsi programme.

How did you get involved in the fight to expose the Vyapam scam?
Prior to taking the Pre-Medical Test, or PMT, in 2013, my daughter, Saloni Chopra, had gone to Kota, in Rajasthan, for coaching. She was fairly good at studies. When the results were announced, Saloni’s rank was around 1000. She couldn’t get into a medical college. When I asked her why she had failed to make the cut, she said, "The PMT conducted by Vyapam (which is the Hindi acronym for Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal, the Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board) is rigged, and that students get into medical colleges because they have a setting (deal)."

You didn’t believe her, did you?
I thought she was making excuses for her inadequate preparations for the PMT. But then Dr Jagdish Sagar (one of the principal kingpins of Vyapam) was arrested on July 14, 2013, following a Crime Branch raid on a hotel in Indore. He was identified as the mastermind of the racket, which involved getting "solvers" to impersonate for candidates in return for money. Altogether, the Crime Branch suspected that 345 PMT candidates had used unfair means.

Were you surprised that with a 1,000 rank on the PMT merit list, Saloni didn’t get a seat in a medical college?
Till 2013, Vyapam conducted the PMT and a merit list would be prepared. From this list, depending on their ranking, students were assigned seats in government medical colleges or in the state quota of every private medical college. (Students in Madhya Pradesh have to now take the All-India Pre-Medical Test.) Colleges are assigned according to the preference of students. The higher the student is on the merit list, the more likely he or she will get his or her choice of college.

What’s the system of admission to private medical colleges?
There are six private medical colleges in the state, altogether having 750 seats. Leaving out the seats reserved for NRIs, the disabled, etc., there are 736 seats. Of these, 368 students are admitted from those on the PMT merit list. For the remaining 368 seats, students are required to take the Dental Medical Admission Test, or DMAT, which is held by the All-India Private Medical and Dental Association. These seats constitute what is called the management quota.

So students wishing to study medicine have to take both the tests, as they wouldn’t be sure of getting through the highly competitive PMT?
Yes, Saloni did too.

Do students who get a seat through DMAT have to pay more than those who are admitted to private colleges in the state quota?
This is a big lacuna in the system. Considering you have PMT, the question is: What is the need to conduct DMAT? Why not take students from the merit list of PMT? This lacuna has crept in because of the Supreme Court stay order in a 2009 case, allowing the All-India Private Medical and Dental Association to conduct its own test. The DMAT racket is linked to it.

How is that?
Those who are admitted to private medical colleges in the state quota have to pay Rs five lakh a year as tuition fees. Those who are admitted through the management quota have to pay, in addition to the fee of Rs five lakh a year, a lump-sum of Rs 30 lakh.

All right, so what did you do when you realised Saloni’s had been proved right?
Both Saloni and I filed a joint petition in the Indore Bench of the High Court on August 8, 2013.

Who argued your case?
I did it myself.

But you haven’t studied law, have you?
I have a wholesale business in medicine in Nagda, Ujjain district, but I did my graduation in law. To be honest, I didn’t have the courage to stand before the High Court judges to argue my case. So when the judges asked questions, it was Saloni who answered them. Our PIL was admitted.

What were your pleas?
We had three pleas. One, order a Central Bureau of Investigation inquiry into the Vyapam scam; two, re-conduct PMT, given the high number of students suspected of using unfair means; three, do not admit these students to medical colleges.

What was the order of the Indore Bench on your petition?
On September 25, 2013, the High Court ordered that Pankaj Trivedi, the Vyapam Controller of Examination, should be produced before it. (Trivedi is the cousin of BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi.) This was accordingly done on October 4, 2013 – and he was arrested thereafter. But, by then, the damage had been already done.

Why do you say that?
Look at the sequence of events. On July 19, 2013, Trivedi wrote a letter to the Inspector General of Police, Indore, asking him to furnish the list of candidates suspected of having used unfair means in PMT. On the same day he forwarded the letter to the Superintendent of Police, who wrote that the 345 suspected candidates couldn’t as yet be associated with the case. That letter reached Trivedi in Bhopal on July 20. The speed with which the letter moved was simply amazing.

On July 20, the letter was opened before five eyewitnesses. The Controller’s brief is to conduct examination. However, Trivedi wrote a letter to the Director of the Medical Education and deans of medical colleges. In it, Trivedi cited the Superintendent of Police's opinion to say that they could go ahead with the counselling for admitting students. (During the counselling, students are told which colleges and courses are available to them and, accordingly, admissions are granted.)

You, obviously, feel there was a mischief in all this.
According to a Supreme Court order, the admission process must end by September 30. The government seems to have deliberately allowed Trivedi to complete the admission process, and the racketeers managed to fulfil their commitments to their clients.

But the High Court issued the order to present Trivedi, as you said, on September 25. He needed to carry out his official responsibilities, right?
There seems to have been a conspiracy to ensure Trivedi wasn’t arrested before September 30. You see, on July 26, the government transferred the case from the Crime Branch of Indore to the Special Task Force, or STF. The Crime Branch had carried out a thorough investigation. But when it seemed the Crime Branch would arrest Trivedi, the government transferred the investigation to the STF.

Subsequently, after my petition of August 8, the High Court brought the STF investigation under its supervision. So Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is wrong in claiming it was he who had the scam investigated. The STF was a ploy to drag the case. The STF was forced to investigate the case properly because of the High Court, which would demand it submit a progress report periodically.

The Crime Branch papers clearly show Trivedi as among the principal accused, even by July 16. I moved the Indore High Court saying Trivedi should be produced before the court. My questions are: Why didn’t the STF arrest Trivedi till the High Court ordered that he be produced in the court? At whose direction was Trivedi not arrested?

Then again, the Director, Medical Education, and Principal Secretary, Health, wrote a letter to the STF on August 26, asking it to furnish a list of suspected candidates so that they would be disqualified. But the STF submitted the list on Oct 2, well after the process of admission had been completed.

So what you are saying is that the delay in submitting the list couldn’t have happened without the government’s direction?

This is clear-cut. The STF was headquartered in Bhopal, as are all government offices. For the information to come in, it would have required a day or two. Instead, the STF took nearly one and a half month to furnish the information asked for. This shows Chouhan isn’t a whistle-blower in the Vyapam scam as he claims.

Did the delay in sending information on suspected candidates have an impact on admission to private colleges, or what is also called the DMAT scam?
Trivedi wasn’t directly linked to the DMAT scam, but he was a vital instrument in another sense. There were 345 suspected candidates who were on the merit list of PMT. Out of them, 145 were admitted to government colleges and the remaining were assigned seats in the state quota of private colleges. Both DMAT and PMT were held separately, but the group of racketeers was the same. This group promised their clients a seat in a medical college, whether private or government. All this couldn’t have happened had Trivedi been arrested, say, in July or August, or even just before September 30.

From your narrative, it appears that massive bungling took place on September 30?
In my August 8 petition I had forewarned that a lot of bungling would take place on September 30, the last date for completing the admission process. For one, it was never spelt out how many seats were available in the management quota and how many in the state quota. This enabled the private colleges to switch seats from the state quota to the management quota. These were then assigned to the racketeers' clients. The private colleges pocketed an additional Rs 30 lakh every student admitted thus.

This is exactly what happened. On September 30, 2013, the private medical colleges called for a centralised counselling in Bhopal. However, till 5pm, not a single student was admitted. The reason offered was that there was no vacancy. Then, between 5pm and 8pm, they organised college-level counselling in different cities. Thus, through this ingenious method, 198 seats were allocated to students who didn’t deserve to get in.

What is the status of the August 8 PIL?
In April 2014, the demand for CBI inquiry was rejected. Nor was PMT re-conducted and, yes, students suspected of using unfair means were admitted to medical colleges. (Courtesy the Supreme Court, the CBI probe is now on.)

But you also filed a petition pertaining to DMAT this year.
I filed a petition on May 4, 2015 in the Indore High Court that criminal cases should be filed against private medical colleges, for admitting students in the management quota in excess of their sanctioned strength. I pleaded that those who were admitted fraudulently should be expelled, and that the government should take over the trusts which run private colleges accused of conniving with the Vyapam masterminds. There was another petition filed by my son, Vibhor Chopra, on July 2 this year.

Why did your son file a petition?
After I had filed my petition in May, the Admission and Fees Regulation Committee, or AFRC, came out with a 22-page report, furnishing documentary proof of the fraud the private medical colleges committed in admitting students. It lays down the timeline of who were admitted when, and how. Since new material pertaining to the case had surfaced, Vibhor decided to file his petition.

Why did the AFRC carry out a probe?
The background to this is that the 2013 admission process involving 750 students had been referred by the government to the AFRC. The AFRC imposed a penalty of Rs 13 crore on the private medical colleges in 2014. In fact, the bizarre incident of centralized counselling on September 30 that I referred to earlier is there in the AFRC report. It also contains the statement of AIPMDA Treasurer YS Uprite accepting that he had bribed a minister.

What does Vibhor do?
Vibhor has completed his engineering, but he is now studying law; he is in the first year.

Why has he left engineering and opted for law?
From my experience, he realised it is important to know the mechanism of the legal profession to fight corruption. Saloni, too, is doing law now.

The CBI has told the Supreme Court it doesn’t have the infrastructure to probe the DMAT scam.
The medical education scam is to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore. It’s because of this the CBI is said to be under pressure. The CBI has to merely reconfirm the AFRC’s findings.

What is the current status of your DMAT scam?
Both mine and Vibhor’s petitions have been transferred to the Jabalpur High Court. I have been put under tremendous stress because I will now have to travel 700 km for the hearings.

How much money have you spent fighting these cases?
Between 2013 and now, I must have spent over Rs one lakh.

Have you come under pressure because of your activism? Are you not in the Hindu Jagran Manch?
I am the district coordinator of the Hindu Jagran Manch. I have been with it for nearly 20-25 years and have known the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh people for long.

What inspired you to join the Hindu Jagran Manch?
While engaging in social work, you combine with others in the field – and that is how I got into the organisation.

So what is your work like?
I have been made the Hindu Jagran Manch’s district coordinator, but I don’t participate in all its programmes. I am more engaged in programmes which are good for society, basically, in the kind of activism we have been discussing till now. For the good of society, I meet everyone. I have met Congress leader Satyadev Katare three times. I have spoken to Digvijay Singh.

Since the Manch is part of the RSS, which, in turn, controls the BJP, haven’t you come under pressure because of your endeavour to expose the Vyapam and DMAT scams?
The RSS has always told me to work for the good of society. It has motivated me. Its members also told me, "Abhayji, whether you succeed or not, you should collect and submit all documents to the judiciary."

The RSS has two types of people – there are those leave their home to work for the people; then there are those who fill their home. In the first category are those who work for social good, like sadhus and sants. In the second category are those who fill their pockets. They come to the RSS precisely for this purpose.

In which category would you place Chouhan?
But he is not among those who left home to work for the society’s good 24X7. He lives with his family. (Laughs heartily)

But don’t you think it is hypocritical of the RSS to preach moral values and yet not remove Chouhan?
I don’t think the RSS is with Chouhan. It is much like the Modi versus Advani fight. As is true of Modi, so it is with Chouhan – the fact is MLAs are with him. Also, there is no direct evidence implicating Chouhan as yet.  Five-seven of us have raised the Vyapam and DMAT scams. Katare and Singh entered the field only recently. Consequently, it has become a fight between the BJP versus Congress. This is another reason why Chouhan hasn’t been removed.

Frankly, I am a bit surprised that a person such as you who has taken on the Sangh’s government for the larger public good should be associated with an organisation involved in the ghar wapsi programme, which has bitterly divided the society?
Programmes such as ghar wapsi constitute just 0.1 or 0.01 per cent of all programmes the RSS and its outfits run. But the Congress and the media highlight only things like ghar wapsi.

Nevertheless, these programmes are sponsored by the RSS and the Hindu Jagran Manch participates in it.
But the Manch is also engaged in the swadeshi campaign.

True, but why even initiate programmes such as ghar wapsi?
There is no denying that religious belief is a matter of personal choice. And yes, I do think no programmes should be initiated to divide the society, divide Hindus and Muslims. Both Hindus and Muslims should come together to fight the goondas and the corrupt in their respective communities. The Vyapam scam affected Muslims as well, must have resulted in medical seats being denied to their meritorious children. Look at me, had I been targeting only Muslims, would I have risked exposing the Vyapam scam?