The Rajasthan Police have detained a government teacher for allegedly trying to bribe the cabinet minister for School Education, Madan Dilawar, at his Jaipur residence on Monday.
The incident happened when the minister was holding a public hearing at his official residence in Civil Lines area. As per the minister, the teacher Chandrakant Vaishnav arrived with a letter, a box of sweets, and an envelope. The minister said that he didn’t suspect anything upon seeing the envelope as these are usual with the letters, “thinking it might have someone’s recommendation. But then my photographer Bharat told me that apparently the envelope has money. Once we opened, it had Rs 5,000.”
Vaishnav, posted as a Level 2 science teacher in Banswara’s Ghatol, was seeking a recommendation for appointment as a writer in the textbook committee for science for Classes 6-8, which comes under the Rajasthan State Council of Educational Research and Training (RSCERT).
To influence the minister, who has an RSS background, Vaishnav stated in his letter that he had been associated with RSS’s student organisation, the “Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), and Sangh ideology since his student days.” He said that currently, while holding the post of a teacher, he is also associated “with organisations like the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, which are associated with the ideology of the Sangh.”
Indicating his willingness to rewrite textbooks as per the ideology, Vaishnav said that the new textbooks will be drafted “as per the intention of the present government” and sought a recommendation from the minister for his inclusion in the committee.
Dilawar said that this was the first such instance of his life which is also the “worst.”
“This is the first such instance in my life; I have been in politics for 35-36 years and am a third time minister. It is quite painful that someone could think that the Education Minister can take a bribe and act on their request,” Dilawar said, adding that this was also the first time he saw this person.
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Taking a dig at the Congress, Dilawar said, “I would not like to comment on the past or future. There could have been a tradition (to bribe the minister). Hence, he dared to do this.”
Vaishnav, now suspended, is now being questioned by the Jaipur Police.
