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By:

Correspondent

21 August 2024 at 10:20:16 am

Merit Mafia

The NEET scandal, which has shaken the futures of nearly 23 lakh students across India, now leads unmistakably to Maharashtra. The alleged ‘kingpin’ of the paper leak racket, according to the CBI, is a chemistry professor from Nashik who ran a private coaching centre. He was a man entrusted with access to examination material through his association with the National Testing Agency and now stands accused of converting that privilege into a criminal enterprise. The symbolism is uncomfortable....

Merit Mafia

The NEET scandal, which has shaken the futures of nearly 23 lakh students across India, now leads unmistakably to Maharashtra. The alleged ‘kingpin’ of the paper leak racket, according to the CBI, is a chemistry professor from Nashik who ran a private coaching centre. He was a man entrusted with access to examination material through his association with the National Testing Agency and now stands accused of converting that privilege into a criminal enterprise. The symbolism is uncomfortable. Over the years, India has grown grimly accustomed to national-level examination scandals emerging from the badlands of governance in Bihar or Uttar Pradesh. Paper leaks, proxy candidates and exam mafias seemed to belong to a familiar geography of institutional collapse. Maharashtra, by contrast, liked to imagine itself above such decay by projecting itself as a modern, educationally enlightened state whose cities drew students from across the country. That illusion now lies shattered. According to investigators, the accused professor allegedly dictated questions and answers during private coaching sessions held in Pune days before the NEET examination. Students copied them down in notebooks. Many later matched the actual paper verbatim. Another accused allegedly charged lakhs while promising leaked papers and medical admissions. For years now, Maharashtra’s educational ecosystem has been drifting towards something predatory. Cities like Pune, once celebrated as intellectual centres, increasingly resemble giant marketplaces of academic anxiety where coaching institutes reign like parallel governments. ‘International schools’ demand fees that verge on extortion. Professional education has become a punishing financial contest in which parents mortgage savings, futures and sanity in pursuit of admissions. Maharashtra has always been a state with a rich progressive educational legacy. But today, Pune’s old sobriquet of ‘Oxford of the East’ carries an unintended irony. The city still produces engineers, doctors and software professionals in enormous numbers. But it also exemplifies the industrialisation of aspiration. Education has become transactional in the crudest sense. Once that transformation occurs, the leap from aggressive commercialisation to outright criminality should come as no surprise. In this light, the NEET leak appears less like a shocking rupture than the logical culmination of a wider moral decline. When educational institutions begin operating like extraction businesses, middlemen and racketeers inevitably emerge to monetise desperation further. Millions of students still cling to the belief that competitive examinations, however unforgiving, offer at least a narrow pathway of fairness. A scandal like NEET corrodes that belief. It seems to suggest honest students that hard work alone may not suffice when others can simply purchase advantage. But Maharashtra should worry about something else too: a drastic reputational decline. A state once synonymous with educational seriousness increasingly risks association with coaching cartels, extortionate fees and examination rackets. When the alleged kingpin of the country’s most notorious entrance-exam leak emerges not from the expected hinterlands of dysfunction but from Maharashtra, it suggests that the rot has travelled far beyond than what anybody imagined.

BMC auctioning three land parcels to raise funds, says Aaditya

Updated: Oct 22, 2024

Aaditya

Mumbai: Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray on Thursday alleged Mumbai’s civic body had decided to auction three land parcels to raise funds and make up for the “loot” of the metropolis by the Eknath Shinde government.


The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which is being run by an administrator now, has decided to auction the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Mandi (Market), the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) Malabar Hill Receiving Station and the Worli Asphalt Plant, Thackeray pointed out.


“The sale of Mumbai is being done by the Eknath Shinde regime to benefit its favourite builders and contractors,” he alleged.


A criminal investigation will be conducted into the matter after the Maha Vikas Aghadi government comes to power, Thackeray added.


“So on one end, they looted the BMC and Mumbai and gave the money to their favourite contractors. Now, by auctioning these iconic and important land parcels, the BMC will be left without both funds and plots,” the Shiv Sena (UBT) leader and former state minister claimed.


When Shiv Sena started controlling the BMC in 1997, its finances were in deficit but by 2022 his party turned around the fiscal health of the civic body, Thackeray said.


Alleging that the Shinde government wants to drive Kolis and fisherfolk out of Mumbai, he said, “We will oppose this. It has to remain and be made into a fish market, and (should be) in the ownership of the BMC.”


Aaditya puppet for urban naxals: Shelar

Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ) Mumbai chief Ashish Shelar has called Uddhav Thackeray’s son and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray as a puppet for urban naxals after former’s comments on the Dharavi Redevelopment project and has also challenged him for a debate.

Ashish Shelar said that the project is a necessity and a priority project, adding that Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena and Congressleader Varsha Gaikwad are peddling lies.

Aaditya Thackeray seems to have become the spokesperson of urban Naxals. Without studying the subject (Dharavi) in detail, Aaditya Thackeray is speaking like an ignorant. I have seen that these people have been trying to set a narrative regarding Dharavi and the re-development work,” Ashish Shelar said.

He challenged Aaditya Thackeray and Varsha Gaikwad in a debate on the Dharavi Redevelopment Project.

“Uddhav ji and the people of his party – Aaditya Thackeray and Varsha Gaikwad have started this false narrative regarding Dharavi. I openly challenge Aaditya for a debate. I want to ask him that 70 per cent of the homes in the Dharavi Redevelopment Project will go to Marathi people, Muslims and Dalits. It is their rightful home, so why are they putting roadblocks by creating a false narrative?”

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