The Congress and the BJP on Wednesday sought to use a recent court filing by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to press for the resignation of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on the charge of abetting gold smugglers and economic offenders.
Quoting the Central agency, Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said Mr Vijayan was “in the knowledge of” the appointment of UAE consulate-linked gold smuggling case accused Swapna Suresh as a marketing consultant at the Space Park project under the IT Department.
The deposition has lent credence to the suspicion of the Opposition that gold smugglers and economic offenders had infiltrated Mr. Vijayan's office and basked in his patronage, he said.
Swapna had told the ED that she had met Mr. Vijayan “5 to 6 times in the presence of his former Principal Secretary M. Sivasankar”. The bureaucrat, who controlled the Chief Minister’s Office and was a close confidante, had “illegally recommended” Swapna to the government post when she was an employ of the UAE consulate, Mr. Chennithala said.
He said the ED had revealed that a builder had paid Swapna and others a considerable bribe to bag the UAE-Red Crescent-Life Mission contract to construct dwellings for the poor in Thrissur.
The builder later offset the bribe against the contract amount by reducing the number of apartments from 200 to 140. Finally, the homeless picked up the tab for the government-sanctioned graft, Mr. Chennithala said. He and four UDF leaders marched to the Secretariat to demand Mr. Vijayan's resignation.
BJP president K. Surendran said the ED had exposed Mr. Vijayan's links to economic offenders and traitors. He named two more senior government officials who he said had assisted Swapna. He said Mr. Vijayan had lost the right to continue in office. The BJP would step up its agitation for his resignation.
CPI(M) counters
Meanwhile the CPI(M) said the Congress and BJP had cherry-picked the ED’s statement to portray the government in a bad light.
The ED clearly stated that Mr. Sivasankar was the “point of contact” between the State and the UAE consulate. Moreover, Swapna had told the agency that Mr. Vijayan knew her as secretary to the UAE Consulate general. The CPI(M) State secretariat, which is scheduled to meet here on Friday, was likely to counter the charges.