The fate of Jammu and Kashmir’s school education minister Peerzada Muhammad Sayeed hangs in balance after the investigation done by the state police’s Crime Branch (CB) corroborated the charge that his foster son used unfair means to pass the senior secondary examination.
As the pressure on Mr Sayeed to quit has only increased, chief minister Omar Abdullah has taken up the matter with his coalition partners in the Congress party. A decision is expected to be taken by Friday. Confirming this, Mr Abdullah tweeted late on Thursday evening: “Am discussing the Peerzada matter with my allies as he holds a portfolio allocated to them. Expect further action in the matter tomorrow.”
Mr Sayeed, a former J&K PCC chief, is likely to be asked to resign even though it is not clear if he had misused his authority to influence the concerned officials to favour his foster son Inam Sauban in the Class 10 examination or someone from the family, likely to be a female member, played a role using the minister’s name.
In another tweet on Twitter, the chief minister said, “Syed heads the department about which allegations have been levelled and that fact is inescapable.” In yet another tweet, Mr Abdullah said, “So even though the crime branch have stopped short of naming the persons who influenced the cheating, it’s the proverbial Ceaser’s wife story.”
The CB has concluded that there were some irregularities in the answersheets of Sauban’s examination passed in 2009. The evidence in the case includes documents about the use of dubious means and how answerscripts of Urdu and mathematics were written in two hands so as to enable him to pass the examination. It has also been reported that the candidate resorted to unfair means during the conduct of examination in connivance with the supervisory staff and officials of the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education (BOSE), particularly the then deputy director academics, who is alleged to have provided illegal and undue help at the best of the then secretary, BOSE. Not only that, the BOSE officials had, prior to the exams, allowed Sauban’s migration from one examination to another favourable one.
Sauban is actually a child of the minister’s second wife, a medical doctor, from her first husband Parvez Ahmed, alias Biloo, who was a Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) militant commander killed by rivals from Hizbul Mujahideen during the heyday of insurgency. Mr Sayeed married her after his first wife died of a serious ailment more than a decade ago. Ironically, Sauban passed the Class 12 examination with distinction last month.