The CPI(M) on Monday justified the sale of land and building belonging to party organ Deshabhimani daily in Thiruvananthapuram to a company owned by controversial businessman VM Radhakrishnan aka Chakku (sack) Radhakrishnan through an allegedly fraudulent benami deal.
CPI(M)’s central committee member EP Jayarajan, also general manager of the daily, justified the sale carried out in July, 2012 after it triggered a controversy following appearance of reports about it in the media the other day with indications that the deal was proof of the unholy link between the party and the controversial businessman.
It is said that the property was sold to the firm of Radhakrishnan, facing serious criminal and corruption charges, by undervaluing it and misleading the Registration Department. The land deal was between Jayarajan and one Danish K Chacko, who was managing director of the Coimbatore-based company just for a few days over which the sale was done.
A huge section in the CPI(M) is of the opinion that the Deshabhimani management or the CPI(M) had no right to sell the property of the paper which was bought years ago with the money pooled by party workers, sympathisers and the general public. Even the Deshabhimani management admits that the paper had no financial problems that warranted property sale.
This is not the first time a controversy pertaining to the alleged links among Radhakrishnan, Deshabhimani and the CPI(M) has come up. The party had been pushed into the defensive after an advertisement of Surya Group owned by Radhakrishnan had appeared on the front page of Deshabhimani the day the CPI(M) plenum in Palakkad ended last month.
“There is nothing wrong in the sale,” Jayarajan said on Monday. “The property was sold after publishing an ad. We had no deal with Chakku Radhakrishnan. The property was sold to Danish Chacko, the company’s managing director, hailing from Thiruvalla. Nobody can find fault with us even if we sold the property to Chakku Radhakrishnan himself,” Jayarajan said.
The CPI(M) Central committee member said that no permission was needed from the CPI(M) for selling Deshabhimani’s property. The sale had taken place almost two years ago and the controversies now being triggered are part of a bid to destroy the CPI(M) and Deshabhimani. But there is no use. I have total support of the party,” he said.
Jayarajan was removed as general manager of Deshabhimani in 2006 following the controversy over the receipt of Rs 2 crore in bonds for the paper from “lottery king” Santiago Martin. Though the Marxist party and Jayarajan had tried to justify this in many ways, he was sacked eventually and the money was reportedly returned to Martin.
The 32 cents of land and the building in it which housed the old office of Deshabhimani and its printing press at Manjalikkulam in Thiruvananthapuram were sold in July, 2012 to the Coimbatore-based company, Capital City Hotels and Developers, which allegedly belonged to Radhakrishnan.
The company had paid `3.3 crore for the property located in the heart of the State’s capital city where, according to local people, a cent of land could cost anything between `50 lakh to `70 lakh. As per the records at the Registration office, the signatories to the deal were Jayarajan and Danish K Chacko, who had become the company’s MD just a few days before the sale.
A few days after the land deal, Radhakrishnan, who was MD before Danish Chacko was installed in that post, returned to the same position, indicating that the arrangement could have been intended to purchase the land through benami route. “It is not our headache whether Danish Chacko had handed over the land to someone else,” said Jayarajan.
Radhakrishnan, said to be close to top leaders of the CPI(M) and Congress-led UDF, had spent several weeks in prison under judicial custody in the case pertaining to the death of Saseendran, former secretary of public sector Malabar Cements, and his two sons. He is also facing several Vigilance probes in connection with financial irregularities in the State PSU.