After a lull of about one-and-a-half years, the infamous solar scam has returned to haunt Kerala’s scandal-beleaguered Congress-led UDF Government thanks to a ‘disclosure’ that tainted Finance Minister and Kerala Congress (M) chairman KM Mani’s son Jose K Mani MP had an allegedly immoral connection with con woman Saritha S Nair, the main perpetrator of the scam, and that Mani had held secret talks with her to protect his son’s reputation.
The CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF, which had in August, 2013 held a failed campaign over the scam demanding the resignation of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who was accused of direct involvement in the scam, is now considering launching a second agitation over it just when the Government is writhing to get out of the bribery and Budget sales allegations against Mani.
The Kerala Police’s Crime Branch has started a probe into the alleged conspiracy behind the surfacing earlier this week of a note claimed to have been written by Saritha while she was in prison in which she had mentioned that Jose K Mani had exploited her sexually at three different places when she was trying to establish her solar power business.
The solar scam pertains to the duping of several persons of crores of rupees by Saritha and her former live-in partner Biju Radhakrishnan by promising to install solar power projects with financial assistance from Government. For this, Saritha had allegedly made the Chief Minister’s office her operational base with the help of some of his former aides, one of whom was arrested.
The worm can of solar scam, which Chandy had thought he had sealed in October, 2013 by announcing a judicial probe, was reopened this week by none other than KC(M)’s vice-chairman PC George, whom the UDF had on Tuesday removed as Government Chief Whip as per a recommendation from Mani and by the appearance of copies of ‘her’ note in the media.
Immediately after some Malayalam TV channels reported that Jose K Mani and several Congress leaders including Ministers had exploited Saritha sexually and financially by promising help for her solar power business, George came out with the allegation that Mani had held secret negotiations with Saritha to ensure that his son’s name did not figure in her ‘list’ of exploiters.
Surprisingly, it was not just Jose who had denied the charge but Saritha too did so by claiming that the note shown by TV channels was not hers. At a Press conference, she showed another bunch of papers claiming that this was the note she had actually written while she was in prison and that the reports appeared on TV were all lies.