Kerala’s Congress-led UDF Cabinet on Wednesday decided to appoint as Chief Secretary senior civil servant Jiji Thomson, fifth accused in the case pertaining to the palm oil import scam which had cost PJ Thomas his job of Chief Vigilance Commissioner. The Government headed by Congress Chief Minister Oommen Chandy rejected the protests raised by those like Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan who has been pursuing the palm oil case for the past 15 years to appoint Thomson, a 1980 Kerala batch IAS officer and former director of the Sports Authority of India, as Chief Secretary.
Thomson is presently Additional Chief Secretary in the General Administration Department of Kerala and he will assume charge as the State’s Chief Secretary when present incumbent EK Bharat Bhushan retires on January 31. Bhushan was on Wednesday given a farewell by the Cabinet at its meeting. An in-principle decision to make Thomson the Chief Secretary had been taken at least three weeks back. Achuthanandan had at that point said that the Supreme Court, while considering the case of former CVC PJ Thomas, another accused in the palm oil case, had made it clear that bureaucrats accused in graft cases should not be considered even for promotion.
However, Chief Minister Chandy took a position that Thomson was named as an accused in the Vigilance case merely on technical grounds and that this need not become a hindrance for him becoming the Chief Secretary. Chandy also pointed out that the former lDF Government headed by Achuthanandan had appointed PJ Thomas as Chief Secretary.
The appointment of Thomson is bound to trigger a controversy given the political situation in the State where the UDF Government is already embroiled in a serious scam pertaining to the charge that Finance and law Minister KM Mani had taken crores of rupees as bribe from bar owners and had collected huge sums of money through “sale” of Budget proposals.
A petition has already been filed in the Kerala High Court seeking interim direction to the State Government not to appoint Thomson as Chief Secretary. The petitioner has alleged that the IAS officer, who was managing director of the Civil Supplies Corporation when the palm oil import took place, was the master brain behind the deal.
The High Court had on January 8 turned down the State Government’s request to withdraw the palm oil corruption case, observing that the only beneficiaries of withdrawal of the case would be the accused and that corruption cases should be withdrawn only if there was public interest. The court had also said that the case had to go on for the truth to come out.
The State Government had argued that the case could not go ahead as main witnesses had been dead and that it had been going on for a long time affecting the promotion opportunities of the bureaucrats named as accused. Thomson himself had approached various levels of the Judiciary for getting discharge from the case.
The case pertains to the import of 15,000 tons of palm oil through Malaysian company Power and Energy Pvt ltd by the Kerala Government headed by (late) K Karunakaran in 1992 at inflated rates for distribution through the public distribution system, causing a loss of Rs 2.8 crore to the Exchequer. Apart from Karunakaran, Thomas and Thomson, former Food Minister TH Musthaffa, former Chief Secretary S Padmakumar and former Additional Chief Secretary Zacharia Mathew were named as accused in the chargesheet filed in 1999. Karunakaran’s name was removed from the list after his death in December, 2010.