The Kerala High Court on Tuesday gave a clean chit to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the sensational palm oil import case of 1992 by dismissing a petition challenging an earlier Vigilance court decision accepting a probe report exonerating him.
Dismissing the petition filed by Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan, Justice SS Satheesh Chandran upheld the decision of the Special Vigilance Court in Thrissur that Chandy, then Finance minister, had no role in the palm oil import scam. The High Court verdict has come as a big relief for Chandy when he is facing attack over the infamous solar power scam.
The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau, which had carried out a reinvestigation into the scam, had on January 7, 2012 told the Thrissur court that there was no evidence to name Chandy as an accused. The Chief Minister had relinquished the Vigilance portfolio on August 9, 2011 after a probe was ordered by the Vigilance court in Thiruvananthapuram against him.
The probe report, which the Thrissur Vigilance court accepted, had said that Chandy, as Finance Minister in the then K Karunakaran Government, had not indulged in any kind of conspiracy but had only endorsed the decision of the Cabinet to import palm oil from Malaysia. The High Court also accepted this conclusion.
Observing that Achuthanandan had not at any stage of the palm oil import case wanted Chandy to be named as accused, the High Court said there was no complaint when the case was registered against the other accused. The judge also expressed the doubt that whether there could have been political intentions behind the complaint against Chandy.
Achuthanandan had alleged that the Vigilance report exonerating Chandy in the case was not truthful and that the investigators had not analyzed the evidences properly. He had approached the High Court saying that the Vigilance court in Thrissur had not heard his arguments before accepting the probe report. However, the High Court dismissed this argument also.
The court quoted in its order the Government’s submission that the petitioner’s effort was to delay the trial in the case and that Achuthanandan had no legal right to intervene in the case. The judge instructed the Vigilance court to go ahead with the trial proceedings.
The timing of the dismissal of Achuthanandan’s petition is of huge importance as far as Chandy is concerned as it has come just when the Opposition is demanding his resignation for the alleged links between his office and con-woman Saritha S Nair and her partner Biju Radhakrishnan who had duped several people in the name of a fraudulent solar power company.