School minister ‘cheats’ - Probe alleges politician sent proxy to write his exam

G.C. SHEKHAR
Chennai, Oct. 8: An education minister taking his Class X board exam is surprising enough. But now the minister faces a police case for allegedly not writing the exam himself but sending a proxy.

Eyebrows had been raised when P.M.L. Kalyanasundaram was handed the education portfolio in Puducherry after this year’s Assembly polls. The 34-year-old had failed his Class X exams in the early 1990s before quitting studies and joining politics.

However, the young minister decided to make amends by appearing in this year’s supplementary board exam to clear his two pending Class X papers.

Since Puducherry doesn’t have a school board, the Union territory’s students sit for the board exams in Tamil Nadu. Kalyanasundaram’s exam centre was the Tagore Matriculation Higher Secondary School in Jayapuram, Tindivanam, 140km from Chennai.

An inquiry by Tamil Nadu educational officials, however, charged the minister with sending another person to write his science paper on September 29. Today, the Tamil Nadu police registered a case of criminal conspiracy, cheating and impersonation against him and the alleged proxy, who is yet to be named.

The Puducherry Opposition had been accusing the minister of cheating and demanding he be sacked by chief minister N. Rangasamy, whose All India NR Congress — a breakaway Congress faction — had come to power by allying with the AIADMK.

Tamil Nadu’s AIADMK government is pursuing the case vigorously since Rangasamy had dumped the ally after the elections, not giving it a single ministry berth.

Kalyanasundaram claims he appeared in the science exam on September 29 in person but could not sit for the social science paper the following day as he had to attend a meeting in Puducherry. He denies sending a proxy.

His exam hall ticket, however, contains the Tindivanam address of a local schoolteacher, P. Aadhavan, and not the minister’s address in Puducherry. Aadhavan has been made an accused in the case along with M. Rajnikanth, the exam hall supervisor who says the person who wrote the exam resembled the photograph on the hall ticket.

“The proxy will be charged once he is identified. Our preliminary inquiry has proved that the minister did not write the exam,” Tamil Nadu school education minister C.V. Shanmugam said.

Kalyanasundaram has alleged the Opposition is targeting him because he has emerged as the number two in the Puducherry government, and insists that the police investigation would clear him.

“I am doing BA in history under the open university system of Madras University, and I thought it was only appropriate that I clear the Class X and XII exams before that,” he said.

Former Puducherry chief minister V. Vaithilingam had earlier led a team of Congress MLAs to Lt Governor Iqbal Singh, demanding Kalyanasundaram be sacked for setting a bad example before students.

“It’s a shame that an education minister has so brazenly committed a fraud on the exam system,” Vaithilingam said.

How ironic?
Shows the standards of our politicians.
The Education Minister of a state caught cheating in a class X exam.
What can you expect from the children who are under this education minister?