Kerala’s CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF on Wednesday accused Chief Minister Oommen Chandy of turning his official residence into a venue for conspiring to victimise Yamini Thankachi, wife of KB Ganesh Kumar who resigned as State Forest Minister on Monday following the charge of torturing her for the past 16 years.
The Opposition’s charge is that Chandy had forced Yamini, who had approached him on March 7 to complain about the torture she was suffering from Ganesh, to give him a letter stating that she had no complaints and later conspired with some of his Cabinet colleagues and the Director General of Police to trap her in a criminal case for atrocities against her husband.
“Chandy forced Yamini, who had met him to complain against her husband, to sign a contract with Ganesh and then conspired against her with his Ministers and the DGP. It was because of this conspiracy that the police refused to charge Ganesh under the Act on domestic violence and charged Yamini with non-bailable offences,” Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan said.
“This is the first time in Kerala that the Chief Minister’s official residence was being used for hatching a conspiracy. A Chief Minister who has committed this has no right to continue in that position. Therefore we are asking Chandy to resign. There will be no compromise from the part of the Opposition on this issue,” Achuthanandan told reporters on Wednesday.
The Opposition is alleging that the Chief Minister had deliberately refused to report the charge of domestic violence against a member of his Cabinet when his wife raised it and this was a criminal offence as per the provision of the Act concerning domestic violence by which it was mandatory for him to report it the moment it came to his notice.
Chandy denied the Opposition charge. “My intention was to keep that family together and not to worsen the situation for it. I have committed no wrong. I had not received any complaint against Ganesh on that particular day. But when I got a complaint on Monday, I immediately left it for the concerned authorities to pursue,” he said on Wednesday afternoon.
Noisy arguments over the issue stalled the proceedings in the Assembly for the second consecutive day, Wednesday. The Opposition raised intense protest in the House after Speaker G Karthikeyan refused leave for a submission Achuthanandan was planning to raise on the matter at Zero Hour, forcing the Speaker to adjourn the House for the day in the morning itself.
During his Press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Chandy failed to give a clear answer when asked why Ganesh, who resigned as Minister over Yamini’s complaint on domestic violence, did not relinquish his membership in the Assembly. The Congress-led UDF Government is surviving on a wafer-thin majority of just three seats in the 140-member Assembly.
Ganesh and Chandy have reiterated that no such incident had ever occurred. But the Government, the ruling UDF and George’s Kerala Congress(M) have not so far given a clear answer so far as to why they are not taking action against him if he was trying to defame a colleague in the Government, of which he was a part, by leveling a baseless charge.