The State Cabinet decision to go order Vigilance and criminal inquiries into the solar scam on the basis of the Sivarajan Commission recommendations and the subsequent legal opinion by the Advocate General and the Director of Public Prosecutions has caused some bewilderment in the Congress and the United Democratic Front.
The Congress has already termed the batch of decisions on the solar scam as “political vengeance, political vendetta and politically motivated”. If there is one thing that was evident, but unsaid in Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s press conference and in the press statement he issued, it was that the further action in the solar scam had a political dimension to it.
Mr. Vijayan as State secretary of the CPI(M) had led a strong agitation demanding a probe into the solar scam and Mr. Chandy’s resignation as Chief Minister. The highlight of the agitation was the blockade of the State Secretariat. The Secretariat agitation was stamped as a failure for the abrupt manner in which it was called off.
It was, therefore, not surprising that Pinarayi Vijayan the Chief Minister took emergent action no sooner than he got the 1,250-page report of the Sivarajan Commission that probed the solar scam if only to prove that the LDF vindication of its agitation.
However, the pin-pricking part of the Cabinet decision is that senior leaders who were or are close aides of Mr. Chandy and belonged to his faction are the targets. Former Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, Electricity Minister Aryadan Mohammed and former legislators Benny Behnan and Thampanoor Ravi have been put in the dock and brought under the purview of either a Vigilance or criminal investigation. A few police officials have also been indicted for tampering with evidence.
The Cabinet decision to order a probe into certain references in the commission report on the basis of new evidence in old cases and new probe into fresh complaints, along with the one to treat sexual gratification as an act of corruption also assumes significance. The immediate impact of Wednesday’s decision will be on Mr. Chandy, who has put up a brave front, but investigations with an admittedly political dimension is likely to be messy.
It also comes at an inconvenient time for Mr. Chandy in view of the fact that the Congress is going through a reorganisation process that decidedly includes an internal rearrangement of political equations in tandem with changes in New Delhi.
With a majority of his supporters now coming under the scanner, it remains to be seen how much the solar scam will pan out against Mr.Chandy and haunt the Congress and the UDF.
The Congress has convened its political affairs committee to discuss the counter-action against the government decision. The UDF is scheduled to meet on October 18, but it appears it would be convened earlier. It is not sure at this point of time whether or how the new developments would affect Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala’s one-month-long “padayottam” against the Central and Sate Governments’ unpopular policies, to be flagged off from Kasaragod on November 1. The UDF leadership might try to tweak its proposed hartal on Monday.