Case against Puducherry education minister for exam fraud

TNN

Chennai, 09 October 2011: The Tamil Nadu police on Saturday registered a criminal case against Puducherry education minister P M L Kalyanasundaram (34), who allegedly used an impersonator to write the class 10 supplementary exam in Villupuram district in September. 

 

The district crime branch filed a criminal case against Kalyanasundaram, exam hall supervisor P Adavan and office assistant M Rajini Kanth, who allegedly helped the minister to carry out the impersonation plan. 

 

A school dropout, Kalyanasundaram is a first-time legislator in Puducherry and became education minister and holds the IT and transport portfolios as well. The minister had told TOI that he had taken the exam in a private school in Villupuram as he didn’t wish to attract attention. 

"The district educational officer filed the complaint against the minister after a thorough probe. The investigation confirmed that there was strong prima-facie evidence that the minister had used a proxy to write the exam," Tamil Nadu minister for school education C Ve Shanmugam told TOI. Puducherry chief minister N Rangasamy didn’t contact him regarding this issue, he said. 

 

The exams were conducted at the Tagore Matriculation Higher Secondary School at Jayapuram. On September 29, Kalyanasundaram had allegedly used a proxy to appear for the science examination. According to sources in the school education department, some officials had a role in planning the impersonation. District education officer C Shanmugam had told TOI that the photograph on the hall ticket matched the candidate who wrote the exams and it was only later that he came to know that the candidate was the Puducherry minister. 

 

The Puducherry Pradesh Congress Committee has appealed to chief minister J Jayalalithaa to order a detailed probe into the issue. The Congress has already demanded a CBI probe into the allegations.