The Rajasthan Government on Tuesday rejected the Opposition parties’ demand for a CBI probe into the incident of question paper leak and the allegations of cheating in the competitive examinations in the State.

This was what was decided after a thorough debate on the floor of the House participated by the ruling and opposition parties for 2 hours.

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Intervening the debate and trying to stop BJP’s move to stage walkout after showing resentment on the Education Minister B D Kalla’s statement, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shanti Dhariwal urged the Speaker Dr C P Joshi to allow him to make a reply on Opposition MLAs’ allegations on the Gehlot Government.

The BJP and Rashtriya Loktantrik Party (RLP) MLAs, however, avoided Dhariwal’s interference and staged a protest creating an uproar in the House forcing the Speaker to adjourn it for 10 minutes.

When the House reassembled, Dhariwal, who is also Minister-in charge of Home Department, told the Opposition parties not to compel the Government for CBI probe into the cheating and question paper leak cases as the investigation agency used to take at least 10 years to take up the case. He said that during this period of investigation, the competitive examination would not be rescheduled to benefit the competitors.

Quoting a reply made in Parliament last year, Dhariwal said that the CBI had 12 cases from Rajasthan for probe in the last 10 years, and of which ‘closure report’ was made on 7 cases, in one case the accused was not convicted, and 2 cases were being investigated.

He alleged that in the erstwhile BJP regime, 19 incidents of question papers leak and cheating, were reported till 2018. But, he said, there was no probe at all, even by the Police. In the last 4 years, only 15 cases of paper leak were reported, and strict legal and police actions were taken against the accused.

According to Dhariwal, under the new law of the Rajasthan Public Examination (Prevention of Unfair Means) Act, adopted by the Assembly last year, no accused was spared, chargesheets were filed in certain cases, and 3 examinations, where papers got leaked were rescheduled.

He said that in the REET Level paper leak, the Rajasthan High Court has expressed its satisfaction over the probe conducted by the Special Operation Group (SOG)-Police and the court itself came forward to monitor every such case in future, if anyone brings to its notice any matter.

Earlier in his reply, Education Minister (School) Dr B D Kalla told the House that 2 high level committees; one by former Justice Vijay Kumar Vyas and second by the former Chairman of RPSC Mahendra Lal Kumawat were set up to study the cheating and paper leak cases and make their suggestions for strengthening and conducting the fool-proof examination pattern in future.

Kalla said that the paper leak and cheating mafias were active in many other states too, as Gujarat reported 4 cases since 2018, J&K, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra three each, and one to two in many other states. It was only Rajasthan’s Congress Government that enacted its last year’s act and took serious legal and police action to check unfair means in competitive examinations, he added.

Kalla assured the House that the recommendations of 2 committees were also taken into action by the Department of Personnel and the Education Department.