N S
Sajith
Peoples Democracy
DARK
clouds of a political
turmoil are hovering over Oommen Chandy’s future as the
chief minister, as the
kingpin of a solar plan scam involving several crores of
rupees has revealed about
her nexus with the chief minister and his colleagues. Sarita
Nair, who runs this
under-controversy solar plant and windmill firm, is said to
have perpetrated frauds
amounting to crores of rupees, and she has now revealed to
the police that the
chief minister and his ministers had helped her run the
business (!) it has
been leant that Sarita Nair, who is now in judicial custody,
was called by and
met the chief minister many a time. When the call records
were made public, the
chief minister removed his private secretary Tenny Joppen
and gunman Salim Raj on
June 14.
In
the Kerala legislative
assembly, home minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan informed
that an Additional
DGP was deputed to investigate the issue. The opposition has
demanded that the chief
minister should resign and that a judicial inquiry must be
ordered.
Sarita
Nair was arrested in
the second week of June in a fraud case and remanded. The
interrogation
revealed that various big shots in the Congress party and
the cabinet had been
helping her from the very inception of her firm. Sarita,
while in police
custody, confessed that the chief minister had issued a
letter to her firm and that
this letter was used to woo the investors.
In
the meanwhile, her
husband and director of the Team Solar company, Biju
Radhakrishnan, whom the police
was searching, revealed that Sarita had indeed met the chief
minister and some
of the ministers including the former minister K B Ganesh
Kumar. He said he too,
along with his wife, had met the chief minister and that she
had had illicit
relations with Ganesh Kumar. He also added that Sarita and
Ganesh spent much
time in a hotel in Coimbatore.
Soon
after it, central
minister K C Venugopal confessed that he had met Sarita.
The
revelations pouring
out in the media regarding this scam tell us about the
gigantic fraud committed
by Sarita’s firm in the name of installing solar power
plants. Previously, it
was daily Deshabhimani
and TV channel
Kairali which had made the call records public. Other media
organisations, which
were reluctant to carry the stories initially, later felt
compelled to carry
the news.
CPI(M)
state secretary Pinarayi
Vijayan has demanded immediate resignation of the chief
minister. In a
statement he said that a judicial probe must also be
ordered.
Opposition
leader in
Kerala assembly, V S Achuthandan, has also demanded the
chief minister’s resignation
and a judicial enquiry.
Over
the preceding four
days, when revelations about the links between the chief
minister and the directors
of this notorious and fraudulent solar plant firm --- Team
Solar --- heaped up and
when the mobile phone call records were made public, various
individuals came
forward with complaints against Sarita S Nair and her
husband, Biju
Radhakrishnan. Surprisingly, even though Biju Radhakrishnan
is a proclaimed
criminal and an absconder, he has frequently been giving
telephonic interviews
to news channels.
After
the shocking
revelations came out, the chief minister sought to
outrightly deny his
involvement; this he did in the assembly as well as in
media. But when more revelations
came up, he began to show reluctance to interact with the
media.
Various
organisations
including the DYFI have organised black flag demonstrations
in front of the
chief minister at various places. Fearing a heightening of
the protest, Oommen
Chandy cancelled all his public functions in Puthuppali, his
own constituency.
In the meanwhile, KPCC spokesperson M M Hassan reacted that
the chief minister
would quit if the allegations were proved. Chandy’s arch
rival and KPCC
president, Ramesh Chennithala, took a clever position,
saying that the
opposition is in the habit of unnecessarily raking up
issues.
After Biju
Radhakrishanan asserted
that he indeed had had one hour chat with the chief
minister. This too put the
chief minister in a quandary of new problems. While the
opposition has decided
to take up this issue in the assembly, youth organisations
have planned protest
marches to demand the chief minister’s resignation.
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