A fierce battle has broken out in the Kerala CPI(M) between nonagenarian Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan and the official neo-liberalist leadership over the kind of probe the party should demand into the infamous bar scam pertaining to the allegation that the Finance Minister of the Congress-led UDF Government had demanded a bribe of Rs5 crore and had taken Rs1 crore for reopening the closed bars.
While Achuthanandan, a CPI(M) central committee member, is firm that a CBI probe alone can bring out the truth of the scam, the official leadership under State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan is against this demand. The central leadership also opposed Achuthanandan’s demand on Tuesday but he challenged it within hours by reiterating his position through a statement.
The battle between Achuthanandan and the official CPI(M) leadership over the matter is so intense that the former had even gone to the extent of alleging that the position (of Pinarayi Vijayan and others) that there was no need of a CBI investigation into the scam was equivalent to helping those who were in power.
left with no option, the party on Tuesday decided to hold an emergency meeting of its State secretariat on Wednesday. The war of Achuthanandan — who had led the hardliners of the party till sometime ago — over the bar scam is being interpreted by observers as his refusal to come to terms with Pinarayi and the neo-liberalists led by him.
The CPI(M)’s internal battle has given some relief to Kerala’s Congress-led UDF Government which had fallen into a crisis after bar owners’ representative Biju Ramesh alleged on Friday that Finance and law Minister KM Mani had taken Rs1 crore from them for helping them in getting permission to reopen 418 bars which were lying closed since March 31 for lack of facilities.
The confusion in the CPI(M) has rendered the entire Opposition lDF it leads unable to take a united stand on the matter, enabling the Government to keep the media’s focus away from the scam and the crisis it has brought for the UDF. It also used the opportunity to save its face by declaring a “quick verification” by the Vigilance of the bribery charge.
The official CPI(M) leadership’s opposition to Achuthanandan’s demand for a CBI probe into the scam and its own refusal to spell out its stand have generated a general feeling that it may be trying to help Mani, chairman of Congress ally Kerala Congress (M), with whom the Marxists had allegedly wanted to forge an alliance earlier to topple the UDF Government.
Achuthanandan had first raised the demand for a CBI probe on Saturday but Pinarayi rejected it publicly by saying that the CBI was the worst-reputed probe agency in the country and that even the Supreme Court had termed it as caged parrot. He even said that the Kerala Police was better than the CBI as a probe agency but Achuthanandan stood firm in his position.
The central leadership of the CPI(M), which had supported almost all positions the Kerala party’s official leadership had taken in the past ten years, has also rejected Achuthanandan’s stand. In an open challenge to both the State and central leadership, Achuthanandan issued a statement on Tuesday repeating his call for a CBI probe once again.
He said that the CBI was still the only agency in the country capable of effectively and impartially investigating the case pertaining to the alleged bribery involving the senior-most Minister of the State. He pointed out that the Supreme Court itself had earlier opined that corruption cases involving Chief Ministers and Ministers should be probed by the CBI.
The meeting of the CPI(M) State secretariat on Wednesday is expected to take a final decision on the kind of probe the lDF should demand into the bar scam and the agitations it might hold over it.