The Kerala Assembly on Wednesday censured PC George, former Government chief whip and Kerala Congress (M) legislator, for the derogatory remarks he had made in March, 2013 against former minister and veteran communist KR Gowri and her late husband TV Thomas of the CPI. This is the first time the Kerala Assembly has censured a member of the House.
The resolution for censuring George, based on the report of the Assembly Privileges and Ethics Committee headed by Congress legislator K Muraleedharan which inquired into the charge against him, was moved in the House by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. It was passed unanimously by voice vote.
The resolution was read out with a ruling by Speaker N Sakthan who said George had violated the basic decency a legislator should show and that no member should act like this in the future. George accepted the House’s action against him with ‘humility’. The report of the Privileges and Ethics Committee was tabled in the House on Monday.
Gowri, leader of the Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi, had in March, 2013 said that it was she who had sent back a woman who had come to the Assembly with a child searching for George. The ‘disclosure’, which George termed as an utter lie, was made in the middle a standoff between him and a then minister.
In his response to Gowri’s remark, George, then the Government Chief Whip, had told some mediamen at his residence in Irattupetta in Kottayam district on March 14, 2013 that people might be respecting her as a “95-year-old woman” but her conduct was not good. She was running around to canvas votes at a time she should be sitting at home, he said.
Stating that no woman had come searching for him, George said, “Gowri Amma should be suffering from some serious problems in her head. She must have spoken those words keeping (her late husband) TV Thomas in her mind,” he said. Stiff protests had come up from both the ruling and Opposition sides against George over these comments.
CPI(M)’s Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, Deputy Opposition leader, registered a formal complaint against George over this with then Speaker G Karthikeyan who forwarded it to the Privileges and Ethics Committee for inquiry. The committee, which included three members from the Opposition, took more than two years to complete its inquiry.
The decision to censure George was taken with the dissent note of the three Opposition members – G Sudhakaran and Saju Paul of the CPI(M) and Mathew T Thomas of the Janata Dal (S) – who wanted George to be suspended for a whole session of the House. However, the Opposition did not air any objection when the resolution was moved on Wednesday.
Outside the Assembly, George, a rebel leader of the Kerala Congress (M), third biggest UDF constituent, said that he had already accepted the House’s decision respectfully but “we would soon see who is going to be in the ridiculous position for censuring me for something stated strictly privately in my house, which was reported by some mediamen”.
The action against George, who was removed as Government Chief Whip in April for demanding the resignation of his party chairman KM Mani as Finance Minister over the charges that he had taken bribe from bar owners and that he had been “selling” Budget proposals, has come at a time when the party is preparing to ensure his disqualification as MlA.
A high-power committee of the Kerala Congress (M) had Tuesday night decided to lodge a request with the Speaker seeking George’s disqualification from the Assembly. “Mani can do nothing to me. He is a man who has been selling Budgets since 1967,” George said on reports about the party move.