The Congress leadership on Thursday countered the State Cabinet decision to criminal and Vigilance cases against former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, his ministerial colleagues and a few party functionaries in the solar scam case by picking holes in the basic premise on which they were taken.
Apart from announcing that the party and the UDF would confront the LDF government’s decision politically and legally, Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala, at a press conference in New Delhi, made a formal demand for a copy of the Sivarajan Commission report on the solar scam.
Mr. Chennithala highlighted five basic points to substantiate his contention that the Cabinet decision to pursue the Solar case was politically motivated and was driven by cheap political vendetta and a reflection of the political degeneration of the CPI(M).
The Chief Minister, in his press conference announcing the cabinet decision, did not mention about the commission’s findings on basis of its six-point terms of reference. He did not divulge what was the commission’s findings related to the question whether the government had suffered any financial loss and whether the State government had issued any work order out of turn to the indicted company or individuals leading to any financial losses.
The commission had been tasked to probe the solar scam from 2005 and the Chief Minister was silent on whether the commission had probed the developments between 2006 and 2011 during which the LDF was in power. The Chief Minister had highlighted only those portions in the report that was of interest to the State government, Mr. Chennithala alleged.
Mr. Chennithala also referred to interviews given by the main accused Saritha S. Nair to media establishments in which she had stated that a CPI(M) leader had offered her ₹10 crores to trap Mr. Chandy and K.C. Venugopal. In both these cases, the CPI(M) did not issue any denials, Mr. Chennithala said in support of his contention that further steps on the solar scam was politically motivated. The probe should also focus on whether Saritha had changed her stand after receipt of the pay off.
There was considerable confusion on the contentious letter written by her in terms of its page numbers and its veracity. The accused herself had stated that the letter which was in circulation earlier was a fake one. A probe was called for to bring out whether the letter was a fake, he said.
He also pointed out that not a single consumer who had been allegedly duped had made a deposition before the commission that became the premise of the Chief Minister’s statement the then Chief Minister (Mr. Chandy) and the then Home Minister (Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan) had helped the accused in mobilising funds from various customers for setting up solar panels.
Similarly, in all the cases in courts and police stations in various parts of the State, there is no complaint against any other person other than two individuals (Saritha Nair and Biju Radhakrishnan). Even the petition filed by quarry owner Sreedharan Nair did not name Mr. Chandy an accused, he said.