An alleged bid by Kerala’s Congress-led ruling UDF to nail CPI(M) Politbureau member Pinarayi Vijayan using the SNC lavalin corruption case against him in the context of the upcoming Assembly election failed miserably on Thursday with the High Court deferring by two months the hearing in the review petition filed in the case.
Though the two-month period will end by April-end, the Rs 374.5-crore SNC lavalin case is unlikely to come up for hearing before the Assembly election which is to be held before the second week of May. Pinarayi Vijayan is expected to become the chief minister candidate of the CPI(M)-headed lDF in the Assembly election.
Justice P Ubaid of the High Court postponed the hearing of the revision petition the CBI had filed challenging the discharge by a CBI court in 2013 of Pinarayi and the other accused from the SNC lavalin case, by airing the suspicion that the court was being used for making political gains. Pinarayi was the seventh accused in the graft case.
The State Government had last month impleaded in the revision petition of the CBI through a supplementary plea seeking urgent hearing by pointing at the public interest in the case as it pertained to corruption. At that stage itself, criticism had come up that the Congress-led Government’s actual objective was to keep Pinarayi and the CPI(M) trapped in the case.
When Justice Ubaid took up the case on Thursday, the CBI’s counsel sought postponement of hearing till March 17 as the agency’s lawyer would not be able to appear in the court till that date. The Government lawyer present in the court room opposed this request and sought urgent hearing.
The judge wanted the Government lawyer to explain why hearing this particular petition urgently was necessary when numerous cases were pending before the court. lawyers of the accused intervened to tell the judge that the Government was using the case as a political weapon in the context of the election.
At this stage, Justice Ubaid said that using the court to settle political scores and make political gains was improper and that the court need not allow it. With this observation, he postponed the case for two months. It is now clear that the UDF will not be able to make the SNC lavalin case as a weapon against the left in the Assembly election.
Earlier in the day, former Power secretary A Francis, one of the respondents in the case, had submitted a petition saying that the State Director General of Prosecutions had no right to seek urgent hearing in the case. The petition, citing in detail the political background of the DGP, said that only CBI had the right to make such a request.
In the wake of the postponement of the case, State CPI(M) secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said, “The bid by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and State Congress chief VM Sudheeran to make the SNC lavalin case their main campaign tool in the election has failed. In this context, the DGP who had gone out of his way to file such a plea should resign.”
Chief Minister Chandy said his Government respected the court’s order. “Nobody in the UDF or my Government is in the habit of praising judges when their orders are favourable and attack them when orders are against us,” he said.
The sensational case pertained to the alleged corruption relating to the Rs 374.5-crore contract awarded to Canadian utility giant SNC lavalin by the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) for repair and renovation of three hydro-electric projects two decades back when Pinarayi Vijayan was the Power Minister in the then lDF Government.