The Uttar Pradesh government has recommended a CBI inquiry into the Ayush admission scam.
Confirming the development, an official spokesperson said: “Following orders from Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the case of anomalies in Ayush colleges admission has been referred to the CBI.”
At least 12 per cent admissions in Ayush colleges of the state for the academic session 2021-22 could be bogus with a scam around the counselling process surfacing.
There are 7,338 seats in various government and private Ayush colleges in the state, of which 891 have come under the lens.
The anomalies were flagged by the Union Ayush ministry last week.
After an internal probe, director, ayurvedic services, UP, Prof S.N. Singh lodged an FIR on Saturday.
In his FIR, the department named UPTRON Limited, Gomti Nagar, its vendor company Soft Solution Private Limited and the company’s representative Kuldeep Singh, who were booked for the anomalies.
Charges of criminal conspiracy (section 120 B), dishonesty (420), forgery for the purpose of cheating (468), fraudulently or dishonestly used as genuine any document (471) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) were pressed on the three parties.
Four officials were suspended by the state government in connection with the Ayush admission and counselling scam.
The UP Police formed a special task force to probe the matter.
The complainant alleged that the designated organisation/ persons were asked to conduct the online counselling, based on National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET) merit. But the representative reportedly fiddled the data they obtained from the directorate which led to admission of undeserving candidates, he alleged.
A departmental probe revealed that the natural order of the merit was not followed in many cases. Also, in some cases, the selected students had not even appeared for the NEET.
They believe that the company worked upon a doctored merit list to accommodate its candidates.
Meanwhile, trusting the counselling records provided by the designated agency, the Director General of Medical Education and Training (DGME) went ahead with the admission of the candidates.
But eventually when the anomalies surfaced, the DG office summoned the company to probe the matter. He alleged that the company resorted to dillydallying and corrupted the database to escape trouble.