Solar case: Saritha files impleading petition in HC

Solar scam accused Saritha S Nair moved the Kerala High Court today, seeking to implead herself in a petition filed by former chief minister Oommen Chandy, challenging the report of a judicial commission on the scandal. She filed the plea as arguments were going on in the high court on Chandy's plea that the judicial commission's findings were based on a letter written by Saritha, one of the accused in the scam. In her petition, Saritha said she was an essential party who should be impleaded in the "proceedings assailing the validity of the findings of the Solar Commission".

She also submitted that Chandy "strangely appears to blow hot and cold" at the same time. "He (Chandy) is challenging the authority of a commission, appointed under the Commission of Enquiry Act by himself, desiring to save his own skin," Saritha said in the petition. She pleaded to the court to allow her to implead herself as an additional respondent in the writ petition in the interest of justice. Justice A K Jayasankaran Nambiar posted Chandy's petition to March 8, when Saritha's plea is also likely to be heard. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had tabled the Justice G Sivarajan Commission report on the solar scam in the state Assembly in November last year. The report had found that Chandy and his staff had provided all the help to Saritha and her company in duping people. Justice Sivarajan had submitted his report on September 26 last year, almost four years after the previous Congress-led UDF government in Kerala had constituted the commission, when the charges surfaced about the duping of several people of crores of rupees by Saritha and her accomplice, Biju Radhakrishnan, by offering solar panel solutions to them. The commission, set up in October 2013, had held 353 sittings and examined 214 witnesses and 972 documents.

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