Admissions fraud: CBI books Vizag Kendriya Vidyalaya principal

Visakhapatnam: The ACB wing of the CBI, Visakhapatnam booked the principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya, S. Sreenivasa Raj, here on Thursday for allegedly admitting 193 ineligible students on the basis of fake service certificates.

These certificates had purportedly been issued by various central government departments. Bribes were taken by the principal from these students’ parents for the admissions, an official note from CBI said.

The CBI has registered two FIRs against Principal Raja pertaining to admission of 124 ineligible students during academic year 2022-23 and 69 such students for 2021-22.

“Raja conspired with the parents of ineligible students and provided admission to them into various classes without verifying the applications and service certificates and received undue pecuniary advantage to his bank accounts in SBI and UBI through UPI mode,” the CBI said.

The irregularities were detected by the CBI during a surprise check it conducted in KV, Waltair, on May 3 and 4 this year in order to verify the admissions provided by Raja for 2022-23.

The FIR copy read, “Raja conspired with parents of ineligible students and provided admissions to such students and received a pecuniary advantage in lieu of providing the admissions. This deprived genuine students from getting admissions to the school. The action against Raja was initiated after getting sanction from the commissioner of the Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan, Nidhi Pandey.”

An FIR was filed under section 17 A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 19BB (as amended in 2018) against Sreenivasa Raja, unknown public servants and private persons.