Chief Minister-baiter and Congress MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan presented documents before newspersons to back his claim that Pinarayi Vijayan accepted a bribe of Rs100 crore from the controversial sand mining company CMRL.
The company is the central party involved in the scam in which the company owned by chief minister's daughter Veena Vijayan has been found to have accepted over Rs 1 crore in return of unspecified services.
Kuzhalnadan said Veena Vijayan's offence is minuscule compared to that of the CM and said if he loved his daughter he should not be leaving her in the eye of suspicion. The Centre's Serious Fraud Investigation Office is currently probing the company. The Congress MLA alleged the CM intervened to help the company by granting exemption from the Kerala Land Ceiling Act, which restricted the holding of land above the ceiling of 15 acres.
He said the company has so far mined Rs 40,000 crore worth of rare earth and minerals from the Thottapally area of Alapuzha district, in return of which Vijayan accepted a bribe of Rs 100 crore from the company.
Tracing the sequence of events, Kuzhalnadan said the revenue principal secretary rejected the company's application for permission to hold 50 acres for various purposes in 2021. It unsuccessfully moved two more review applications.
The CMRL then approached the CM, who intervened into the matter despite the fact it was outside his portfolios and advised the company to go back to the district-level committee of officials, which was supposed to sanction such exemptions. The CM allegedly recommended to the committee to reconsider its earlier decision to reject the companys application.
Meanwhile, the Kerala High Court came down heavily on the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation, a shareholder in the controversial company, for opposing the probe by the SFI Office, questioning the motive of the objection and pointed out that the company was being run with public money. The company should instead have welcomed the probe to come clean, the court added.
