Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan blamed the Centre and its investigating agencies for the arrest of his former Principal Secretary M Sivsankar who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate late Wednesday night in connection with gold smuggling and money laundering.
Briefing the media about the Covid-19 situation in Kerala on Thursday, Vijayan read out a prepared statement to express his displeasure over the way central agencies are handling the gold smuggling scam though he remained silent about the arrest of Bineesh Kodiyeri, son of party strongman Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.
“A senior Customs official (Anish Rajan IRS) had told the media that there were no interference from the Chief Minister’s Office to get the baggage addressed to the UAE Consulate released. But he was transferred out of the State overnight and there was no reaction from anybody about this transfer,” said Vijayan when asked about the arrest of Sivshankar.
He said the whole gold smuggling scam, LIFE Mission corruption charges and other allegations were part of the strategies of the Congress and the BJP to portray the government in poor light. “This will not work. We stand committed to the upliftment of the poor and downtrodden,” said the chief minister.
Instead of directly attacking the Centre, Vijayan opted to read from Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s article published in a newspaper recently about how the Centre was misusing its probe agencies to target and victimise opposition parties. “Rahul Gandhi too had told recently that he was a victim of the political vendetta,” said Vijayan.
The Chief Minister claimed he had no acquaintance of any kind with Sivsankar. “He was appointed to my office based on his experience in different departments of the government and that was how I met him,” said Vijayan.
But a senior IAS officer said that Sivsankar was an officer promoted to the IAS from the State Government cadre and he was a senior leader of the SFI during his student days.