Brand Naveen takes a beating

TheNaveen Patnaika government is now scrambling to fight yet another fire as new details about a mega fake certificate racket emerge on a daily basis. Hundreds of people have apparently landed government jobs through fake mark sheets and certificates, forcing the State to order a Crime Branch probe into the murky affair.

Discovered first during the large-scale recruitment by the Odisha Postal Circle, the scandal is believed to have pan-India links even extending to the Uttar Pradesh and other state boards and universities. The Department of Posts has, meanwhile, sought the intervention of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) since it apprehends similar rackets operating in other states as well. The central agency has been requested to probe all Gram Dak Seva (GDS) recruitments made in the last six years.

Significantly, the fake certificate scam is not confined to the Department of Posts. A few days after the fraud was detected in Bolangir district, several cases of dubious educational testimonials being used to corner jobs in various primary schools across the state have come to light, sending the state government into a tizzy. What is baffling is even though the state government was well aware of use of fake certificates in appointments of teachers when the first cases were unearthed in 2015 and it came down hard against the culprits, the practice has, for reasons unknown, continued unabated prompting suspicions about the involvement of politicians and officials in the matter.

To make matters worse, the state is also faced with the issue of spurious drugs. A large quantity of spurious antibiotics, blood pressure medicines and cough syrups were found during raids across the state and the link was traced to producers in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. And, as if this was not enough, the latest to hit media headlines is the abundant availability of pirated government textbooks that find favour with the book sellers because of the higher commission they fetch.

While the cops have turned the heat on the masterminds behind the rackets, many fake certificate users already appointed in the postal department and schools, are on the run apprehending action. Raids by CB at several places have led to arrests of about 20 persons, including the kingpin Manoj Mishra from Bolangir. Mishra, who has been running the racket since 1998 using a coaching centre as a front, has already confessed to his involvement in the fraud. His operation was not confined to Odisha but spread to neighbouring states.

Thousands of fake certificates of various boards, and universities in Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Rajasthan and Sikkim were seized during the raids along with 27 official seals belonging to 47 educational institutes besides computers and hard discs. Another six to seven persons were acting as middlemen. Mishra reportedly had connections with the employees of all these educational institutes and was charging anywhere between Rs. 1.5 lakh and Rs 5 lakh per certificate. A native of Uttar Pradesh, who has links with various institutes across the country, was apparently his aide. Records of six plots of lands belonging to him were also seized by the police and the same were allegedly purchased from the proceeds of crime.

Meanwhile, the grapevine is abuzz with stories about how the entire affair was exposed. One version has it that an alarm was raised when postal officials smelt a rat while scrutinizing applications and certificates for 83 posts of Branch Post Master (BPM), Assistant BPM and Dak Sevaks out of which 37 aspirants were found to have scored between 98 to 99 per cent marks in English and other subjects. All of them had certificates from Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Sikhsya Parishad. The other version is that the red flag was raised after the postal officials found the knowledge of some of the new recruits to be utterly poor despite having scored high marks in the board examination. When one such employee was quizzed, he admitted to having purchased the fake board certificate by paying Rs 50,000.

In Odisha, around 1,100 jobs were filled by the Department of Posts since 2018 for which no written or viva was conducted. Recruitments to such posts were made on the basis of the candidates' school board examination marks and the bogus certificates did the magic for them.

Even as the controversial recruitments in the Department of Posts was raging, detection of appointments of a teacher couple who allegedly produced fake certificates in Bolangir district gave the issue a fresh twist. Stirred out of its stupor, the School and Mass Education Department (SME) directed all the District and Block Education Officers to verify the genuineness of the certificates produced by all the teachers recruited in different schools in the last three years and prepare a list.

Earlier this month, 12 such teachers were placed under suspension in Kandhamal district for alleged submission of bogus B.Ed and CT certificates. Worse, 300 primary school teachers were found to have submitted false birth and caste certificates triggering action against them. The malaise is, obviously, deep and well entrenched.

The issue has evidently given more ammunition to the opposition to attack the Naveen Patnaik led-regime that is already reeling under a barrage of charges about corruption and a southward moving crime rate. The Chief Minister's teflon image has been threatened as his detractors point to the growing supremacy of officials over peoples' representatives. Con artists taking advantage of holes in the systems and processes are not helping the embattled state government's cause.