Mumbai, Dec 2 (IANS): A day after Nationalist Congress Party MP Supriya Sule met Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray demanding that the government abolish the Maha Portal, a senior Shiv Sena leader said a probe would reveal that it was akin to the Vyapam scam of adjoining Madhya Pradesh.

The Maha Portal was set up by the previous Bharatiya Janata Party government headed by former chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, intended to help people with information pertaining to employment opportunities in the government.

Shiv Sena leader Kishore Tiwari, who is an Advisor to the Chief Minister, said: "There have been many complaints about the Maha Portal in the past. There has been widespread suspicion that certain names/surnames were given priority and others were deliberately deleted to favour some particular castes/communities."

He said that there were similar complaints of widespread irregularities in the 'E-tendering' processes introduced by the previous government with certain unscrupulous elements taking undue advantage instead of 'complete transparency' as claimed by the BJP regime.

"Those persons and IT experts associated with managing the Maha Portal are still reluctant to quit from their posts. Many a time, some of them were noticed working at odd hours or locations which was strange," Tiwari claimed.

Submitting a memorandum to the Chief Minister, Sule said that in view of the problems encountered by the jobless on the Maha Portal, the Chief Minister should scrap it and replace it with a better portal designed on the previous Maharashtra Public Service Commission procedures.

Sena leader Aditya Thackeray also raised a similar demand with the Chief Minister and met him along with Sule.

Tiwari urged that a full-fledged investigation into the Maha Portal by external IT experts could help reveal a potential Vyapam type of a scam in Maharashtra, and hence it must be "immediately sealed" and stopped from further functioning.