Bhubaneswar: A day after the Odisha Police claimed to have arrested the mastermind in the OSSC exam question paper leak case from Bihar, the opposition BJP Friday demanded that the investigation be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The demand was made by Odisha BJP unit president Manmohan Samal after Balasore SP Sagarika Nath said that none of the employee of the Odisha Staff Selection Commission (OSSC) were found in the question leak case.
She said that the question of the OSSC’s July 16 JE (Civil) Main Written Examination, was leaked from a printing press located outside the state. The OSSC had ordered that press to print the question paper for the examination, Nath said.
However, the BJP suspected that the question leak was not possible unless there is involvement of OSSC employees. How come fraudsters arrange the name of 88 candidates and their telephone numbers and contacted them, Samal asked?
“If the state government has the moral courage and wants to come clean, then the case should be handed over to the CBI without a minute’s delay. It is all the more important since the future of job aspirants is at stake,” Samal told reporters here.
The Odisha BJP president said the party would look for alternative ways to ensure that the CBI probes this paper leak case if the government decides otherwise. He said a CBI probe can only reveal whether it is an inter-state racket or whether officials in Odisha are also involved in it.
Odisha Congress spokesperson Nishikant Mishsra said that his party demands a High Court-monitored SIT probe into the question paper leak case. The state government and the OSSC should come under the purview of the investigation, he demanded.
The ruling BJD, however, claimed that the Naveen Patnaik government has zero tolerance for such crimes and it has never compromised on the future of students and job aspirants.
Alleging that the BJP is trying to play politics over the paper leak, BJD MLA Dhruba Sahu claimed that the opposition party is left with no issues against the government.
BJD spokesperson Goutam Buddha Das said that the kingpin in the question paper leak case was also involved in the central staff selection commission question paper leak case in the past. Therefore. The BJP should refrain from doing politics in this case, he said.
Earlier, Balasore SP Sagarika Nath had ruled out the involvement of OSSC employees in the question paper leak. She said the mastermind was working as a divisional accountant in the AG’s office in Patna and those arrested from Odisha were working as middlemen.
PTI
