Pinarayi Vijayan faces ED questioning in CMRL payoff case
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) summoning Pinarayi Vijayan, former chief minister and the de facto proprietor of the CPI(M), has shocked the party cadre, barring leaders like M A Baby, the titular general secretary of the party, Thomas Isaac, the former finance minister of the state (who is also known as the P Chidambaram of the CPI(M)), and John Brittas, the Rajya Sabha member. The trio was secretly working to overthrow Vijayan from power. The ED’s summons to Vijayan for questioning on the documentary evidence they have collected in the course of the probe into the pay-off case involving the former chief minister, his daughter Veena and her new husband Mohammed Riyas (a former minister in the council of ministers headed by Vijayan) has made his continuation as Leader of Opposition untenable.
Though Vijayan had approached the Supreme Court challenging the Kerala High Court order upholding a single bench decision granting the go-ahead to register an FIR against him, Veena and Riyas, the chances are that the apex court is unlikely to quash the Kerala High Court verdict. Along with the Baby-Isaac-Brittas trio, popularly known as the Christian Brothers of the CPI(M), the CPI leaders are on cloud nine, as Vijayan strongly resisted the demand by the CPI(M) ‘s poor cousins that a member of that party be named deputy leader of the opposition. Vijayan had declared emphatically that the CPI would not be given the post of deputy LOP and that he would nominate his own party MLA for the post, about which the public was hitherto ignorant.
The CPI had been taking potshots at the CPI(M) regularly and had been pleading with party leaders and disgruntled workers to join them, dumping the Stalinist outfit. Though the CPI stays afloat thanks to favourable media coverage, the ground reality is that it has no base among the masses and survives on the ventilator support provided by the CPI(M). The moment Vijayan understood that the CPI played a significant role in the defeat of the Left Democratic Front, he made up his mind to cut to size the right-wing entity which still swears by the Soviet Union.
K N Balagopal, the former finance minister (2021-2026) who is the deputy leader of the CPI(M) in the Legislative Assembly, is likely to replace Vijayan as LOP, and he has agreed to part with the post of the deputy LOP to the CPI nominee. Thus, Binoy Viswam, the CPI’s state secretary, could cock a snook at Vijayan.
The case against Vijayan is that he received more than Rs.3 crore from a Kochi-based sand mining company in gratitude for the services he rendered to the company during his tenure as chief minister. The money was transferred to the account of Exalogic, a now-defunct software solution provider owned by Veena, and the money was sent to the UAE through a hawala operation. The hawala transaction was successfully executed by Vijayan’s new son-in-law, Riyas, with the help of his friends and associates in various Islamist outfits.
Two cases have been filed by the State government under orders from the High Court. Vijayan is the prime accused in one case, which has been registered under the Prevention of Corruption Act, while Riyas figures in the case charged under the PMLA.
Vijayan earned the rare distinction of becoming the first chief minister of the state who has been summoned by the ED. Meanwhile, the BJP in Kerala is on the warpath against the Congress-led UDF and the CPI(M)-led LDF, alleging a secret deal between the two fronts to save the Vijayan family from the predicament of the corruption and money-laundering charges. Many top leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League figure in the diary maintained by Sasidharan Kartha, the owner of CMRL, and this has been seized by the ED. Though the CPI(M) and the Congress are in open alliance in New Delhi, they are functioning as rivals in Kerala politics to prevent the BJP from taking root in the state.
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