Chandigarh, July 28
The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today proved that no scanner pen was recovered by the Faridkot police in the Pharmacy Officers paper leak case by releasing the recovery memo in the case which clearly mentions that only a Bluetooth receiver and a miniature headphone were recovered from unscrupulous students.
Addressing a press conference here, senior SAD leader Parambans Singh Romana, who released the details of the recovery memo as well as the FIR to the media, said “this means that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and its senior leaders including chief minister Bhagwant Mann and Manish Sisodia are trying to create a false narrative that this is a cheating case in which a scanner pen was used to transmit the paper outside the centre and that there was no paper leak. When no scanner pen has been recovered it means the paper leak happened in advance”, he asserted.
Presenting his case forcefully, Romana said, “Let me make it clear. In case the issue of some students being caught with bluetooth devices had not been reported in the media, the AAP government would not even have registered a case in the matter”. He said this could be gauged from the fact that even though students were caught with bluetooth receiver devices and miniature head phones at 11 am on July 19, the Faridkot police took fifteen hours to register the FIRs in the case. “The very fact that the FIR was registered after such an inordinate delay despite clear complaints from different centre heads indicates that the government tried its best to bury the case,” he said.
Asserting that there was more to the case then what met the eye and that only a high court monitored probe or a CBI probe could bring out the truth, Romana said, “There is also the case of a centre in which a Principal deputed all his relatives on examination duty and even involved DIET students instead of other teachers. This indicates that an organized mafia had leaked the paper and had even made arrangements to ensure students from whom they had collected crores of rupees were provided pliable invigilators and bluetooth receivers and headphones to ensure all questions could be answered correctly”.
Stating that Harjot Bains would have to resign as education minister, the Akali leader said “you cannot have two sets of standards for the centre and Punjab”. He also called out Harjot Bains for trying to wriggle out from his responsibility by claiming the Pharmacy paper was not under his department. “Bains should know that the paper was conducted in his schools and that government school staff invigilated the same. Both Bains and health minister Balbir Singh should resign immediately”, he added.
Speaking about the downfall in the education sector during AAP tenure, Romana said “this phony party talked about revolutionizing this sector. It is actually presided over the decline of 2.25 lakh students in government schools in class ten vis a vis 2018 just after the completion of the SAD government’s tenure in the State”. He said similarly in case of class twelve the drop- out rate was an equally dramatic 1.20 lakh students vis a vis 2018. “Moreover 1,762 government schools have been closed during the last four years and the number of schools with single teachers have risen to a never before figure of 2,400. These are the questions Harjot Bains and AAP should answer instead of resorting to blame games, whataboutery, lies and deception,” Romana added.