bhopal

Updated: Oct 25, 2015 18:00 IST

Gwalior-based Vyapam scam whistleblower Ashish Chaturvedi says that a lot has changed for him in the past year since he started raising fingers against BJP leaders in connection with the Vyapam scam.

“My association with RSS is long. When I exposed PMT scam earlier, they patted my back. Arun Jain, Kshetriyta Pracharak for MP and Chhattisgarh asked me to meet him at RSS office in Gwalior in the month of July, 2014. When I lodged an FIR in connection with the scam in July 16, 2014, I again talked to Arun Jain and he asked me to continue working and accelerate the speed. He was the one who asked me to stay at the RSS headquarters, Samidha, whenever I came to Bhopal and now they are discarding me because I raise fingers at the BJP leaders, including the chief minister,” Ashish told HT.

The last time Chaturvedi came to Bhopal during the ‘Hindi Sammelan’ in September, however, he was sternly asked not to show his face at RSS office if he continued campaigning against the BJP leaders in the scam.

Ashish, who participated in the RSS Dussehra Path Sanchalan in Gwalior on Thursday, however, said that he would continue his association with the RSS because it didn’t belong to a single or a group of persons but manifested an ideology and set of values.

“Why should I quit the RSS? But it’s surprising indeed that RSS, which honoured me at Delhi under the banner of its allied institution — India Policy Foundation — for exposing the Vyapam scam as late as July 11, 2015, decided to give up on me because I was raising fingers at top BJP leaders.”

When asked why the RSS could have changed his stand on Vyapam scam, Ashish said “I feel they wished to tell the people it was not Congress but their workers who broke the scam but when more and more names of BJP and RSS leaders started surfacing in the scam, they changed their stand and asked us to stop too.”

However, RSS spokesperson Hemant Muktibodh, when asked about alleged diktat issued to Ashish Chaturvedi, asking him not to come to Samidha the next time, said “I don’t know much about him. Perhaps, he is from Gwalior. Moreover, I don’t want to get into all this.”