Governor rejects State nominee to info panel

The State government appeared to have suffered a setback on Thursday with Governor P. Sathasivam striking out the name of A.A. Rasheed, one of its favoured nominees, from the panel of candidates short-listed for appointment as members of the Kerala State Information Commission.

Official sources said a police background check had revealed that Mr. Rasheed, a district-level CPI(M) functionary reckoned to be close to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, faced criminal prosecution for his alleged involvement in an extensive Kerala University (KU) appointment fraud in 2005.

At the time, Mr. Rasheed was a member of the KU Senate. The case against him was that he and six other KU officials had thwarted the potential employment prospects of as many as 45,538 graduates who had taken an examination for appointment to the post of University Assistants Grade-II in 2005 by methodically distorting the selection process to benefit a few hundred candidates.

Govt stand

A committee headed by the Chief Minister and including Minister for Law A.K. Balan and Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala had named five persons as commission members and sent the list to Mr. Sathasivam for gubernatorial assent. The Governor had referred the list back to the government seeking clarifications about Mr. Rasheed’s nomination.

However, the government had stood its ground and returned the list to the Governor for his assent.

The others are K.V.Sudhakaran, press secretary to V. S. Achuthanandan when he was the Chief Minister; P.R. Sreelatha, a secretariat employee; former Tranvancore Titanium Products Ltd managing director Somanatha Pillai; and R.G. Vivekanandan.

Mr. Sathasivam cleared the names of all other nominees for appointment as commission members except that of Mr. Rasheed. It appeared he had given some weightage to the purported police verification report against Mr. Rasheed.

The State had pushed for a speedy appointment to make up for the lack of members, which had arguably impeded the functioning of the commission. Former Director General of Police Vinson M. Paul currently heads the commission.