Shivraj Chouhan wants SC to allow CBI probe, dismisses talks on resignation

New Delhi/Jabalpur: The Supreme Court will take up Thursday pleas for a CBI probe in the Vyapam scam as Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan declared today that he would also back such a request in the apex court but ruled out resignation from the post.

All eyes are on the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to take up a batch of petitions for ordering a CBI probe into the multi-crore scandal after the Madhya Pradesh High court today deferred hearing on a state government's plea for a probe by the central agency.

Saying the apex court would hear similar petitions tomorrow, the High Court, where the state government filed a plea yesterday for a CBI probe, deferred the hearing till July 20.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, who was in Delhi, dismissed demands for his resignation saying the Congress and other parties have been demanding it right from the day he became chief minister more than 10 years ago.

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He maintained that none in the party top brass had asked him to plead for a CBI probe. "My leadership trusts me fully and that is something I am proud of.  Noone told me that I should request for a CBI probe.  I felt the need for it myself as an air of suspicion was being created in the last two or three days," Chouhan told PTI.

"We requested the (Madhya Pradesh) High Court that the probe should be done by CBI.  The matter is likely to come up before the Supreme Court tomorrow.  We will make the same prayer there too.

"The Congress and the opposition cannot tolerate the path of progress under me in Madhya Pradesh.  They have been demanding my resignation from the beginning.  They are bringing disrepute to Madhya Pradesh," he said.

Meanwhile, the massive admission and recruitment scam that has seriously dented the state's BJP government's public image, took another murky turn with the post mortem report of a female MBBS student, a suspect in the case whose body was found beside railway tracks in Ujjain in 2012, maintaining it was a "homicidal" death caused by "violent asphyxia".

As the report came into the public domain for the first time at the height of the controversy over a string of mysterious deaths of people associated with Vyapam, including five over the past week, the Madhya Pradesh police decided to reopen the case and launch fresh investigation.

Police had registered a case of murder following Amrita Damor's death but later closed it describing it as an "accident". The case that had faded from public memory with time, had come into focus last week when TV Today group journalist Akshay Singh died soon after interviewing her parents.

A day after the Chouhan government buckled under heightened all round pressure and moved the High Court seeking a CBI probe, the matter came up before a division bench headed by Chief Justice A M Khankilwar which deferred the hearing till July 20 on the ground that the Supreme Court is to hear a clutch of similar pleas tomorrow.

Additional Advocate General P Kaurav said the state government had in its plea contended that though the Special Task Force of MP police was "efficiently" investigating the scam, it wants a CBI inquiry following the "recent unfortunate incidents".

The Supreme Court had yesterday agreed to hear tomorrow the plea of Congress leader Digvijay Singh and three whistle-blowers -- Ashish Chaturvedi, Anand Rai and Prashant Pandey -- seeking a CBI probe into the scam.