In a single day, the Central Bureau of Investigation has withdrawn 20 officers from its special ‘Vyapam scam branch’ in Bhopal.

More than 70 per cent of the staff probing the country’s largest recruitment scam that rocked the state’s politics has been pulled out from the branch in the last six months, even as 50 more cases remain to be solved.

The CBI, in 2015, took over the investigation into all Vyapam related cases, which include the mysterious deaths of 50 people related to the alleged scam, from the Madhya Pradesh Special Task Force. A special team of 40 officers, under a Joint Director level officer, was constituted for the same, following a Supreme Court order.

In 2016, The CBI had created the Vyapam branch and posted more than 100 officers hand-picked from the North and South to shift their bases to Bhopal for a comprehensive investigation and swift action. Officers asked to form part of the special team were however reluctant to continue with their new positions and requested the investigation agency to send them back to their existing postings, reported the Times of India.

All the 20 staff members pulled out from the scam branch in Bhopal have been posted in the probe agency’s anti-corruption branch in Delhi, the report said.

Madhya Pradesh, tainted with the Vyapam scam, is scheduled to go on polls this year. The CBI’s move to pull out staff has irked the opposition Congress which accused the agency of being a hand-puppet of the ruling party, and giving a clean-chit to the accused.

“The Congress had demanded a CBI inquiry into Vyapam scam with a lot of hope, but it ended up giving a clean chit to many of those who controlled the scam. I think they should close this branch,” the TOI report quoted Congress spokesperson KK Mishra as saying.

Calling the transfer a ‘routine process’, officials of the probe agency said investigation in 40 out of the 50 pending cases in the Vyapam scam is at an ‘advanced stage’ and there is no need to read too much into the transfer.

A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General in 2017 had rapped the Madhya Pradesh government for "systematic subversion of rules" in appointment of director and controller of the scam-tainted Professional Examination Board (also known by its Hindi name,`Vyapam').

This "shadowy control" led to a situation where there was "severe erosion in credibility of examination conducted by the Board", CAG report said.

The Board was set up in 1982 for entrance tests for medical, engineering, agriculture colleges, and polytechnics.

The Scam

The Vyapam scam is an admission and recruitment scam involving politicians, senior officials and businessmen in Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board (MPPEB), popularly known by its Hindi acronym "Vyapam"(Vyavsayik Pariksha Mandal).

The scam involved 13 different examinations conducted by Vyapam for selection of medical students and state government employees, including food inspectors, transport constables, police personnel, school teachers, dairy supply officers and forest guards. The examinations were taken by around 3.2 million students.

A number of people connected to the scam and its investigation, died during the course of investigation.

The CBI, in November last year, gave Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan a clean chit in the alleged scam when it chargesheeted 490 accused.

Congress leader Digvijaya Singh had moved a writ petition in the Supreme Court in 2015 seeking forensic investigation of documents, including the hard disk recovered from the Vyapam office.

The CBI said that there is no basis in the allegations made by Singh that the hard disk which was seized was tampered with.

The Congress had then alleged the agency was under pressure of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Read Also: Has CBI failed the nation?

The CBI’s conviction rate was 65.6% in 2005, 72.9% in 2006, 67.7% in 2007 and 64.4% in 2009. In 2017, the Lok Sabha was told that the rate of convictions under this government was 69.02 in 2014, 65.1 in 2015 and 66.8 in 2016. However, these numbers are misleading because they are absolute.

The CBI’s rate of convictions on major crimes is 3.96% according to vigilance commissioner R Sri Kumar.