A court in Thiruvananth-apuram on Thursday ordered a Vigilance probe against Kerala Assembly’s Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan and State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan over the allegation that they had caused a loss of Rs 3.8 crore to the Exchequer by engaging Supreme Court lawyers to appear in the High Court during the 2006-11 lDF rule.
The Special Vigilance Court asked the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau to submit the preliminary report before October 22. It has also ordered probe against five others including CPI(M) Politbureau member and former Home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, party’s State committee member and former law minister M Vijayakumar and ‘legal Dalal’ TG Nandakumar.
The court order was based on a PIl filed by rights activist Raju Puzhankara which said that the former lDF Government had brought senior lawyers practicing in the Supreme Court to appear against the Prosecution in the sensational cases pertaining to SNC lavalin corruption scandal, ice cream parlour sex abuse, lotteries scam and the Muhammad Fazal murder for the Government.
The petitioner alleged that the 2006-11 lDF Government headed by Achuthanandan had caused a loss of Rs 3.8 crore to the Exchequer by engaging costly lawyers from outside the State when there were about 75 lawyers in Kerala including the Advocate General and Director General of Prosecutions for appearing in courts for the Government.
A senior lawyer from Delhi was brought by paying huge amount as fee to argue against the institution of a CBI investigation into the Rs 374.5-crore SNC lavalin corruption scandal and the beneficiary of this was Pinarayi Vijayan, the petitioner said. Pinarayi is the seventh accused in the SNC lavalin case as per the chargesheet filed by the CBI.
As per the petition, an amount of Rs 1.8 crore was spent for paying fees to Supreme Court lawyers S Vadiyanathan and Anand to argue against CBI probe in the SNC lavalin case, which pertained to the corruption behind the awarding of a contract for renovation of three hydel plants to the Canadian company when Pinarayi was Power Minister in 1997.
The petition also said that Achuthanandan, then Chief Minister, had spent Rs 15 lakh of public money to avail legal advice in the case pertaining to the ice cream parlour sex scandal which had become sensational due to the allegation against Muslim league leader and Industries Minister PK Kunhalikutty that he had sexually abused a 16-year-old girl back in 1996.
The court observed that there was substance in the allegation that crores of rupees had been spent against public interest. The petitioner charged that Kodiyeri and Vijayakumar had taken part in a conspiracy with regard to this. He also wanted the alleged relations between Nandakumar and Achuthanandan probed.
The CPI(M), however, described the petition against its leaders as part of a bid by the Congress-led ruling UDF to divert public attention away from the sensational solar power scam which has already presented a huge crisis to the Government with demand for Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's resignation intensifying by the day.
"We will face the case legally," said Kodiyeri Balakrishnan. "We won't try to run away from the investigation as Oommen Chandy is now doing in the solar scam," he said while Achuthanandan said, "let any case come."