The controversy pertaining to Kerala’s Marxist Sports Minister EP Jayarajan’s alleged corruption charge against Olympian and Arjuna awardee Anju Bobby George, president of the Kerala State Sports Council, has got murkier with the athlete asking the Minister to probe the entire corruption in the council even as the new lDF Government is planning to remove her from the position and reconstitute the sports body.
In an emotionally charged letter sent via e-mail to Jayarajan on Saturday, Anju suspected that the allegations against her were part of a move that was in tune with the interests of certain people who had been eyeing high positions. Anju’s comment came in the context of the charges leveled against her by former council chief TP Dasan. Anju was appointed as the council’s head by the former Congress-led UDF Government.
The star long jumper’s letter to Jayarajan, who had allegedly charged her with corruption in her availing airfare for travels between Bangalore where she was based and Thiruvananthapuram for council meetings, has come just when the new CPI(M)-led Government is planning to remove her from the position and reconstitute the entire Sports Council through a new method.
“I am facing the shame of receiving Rs40,000 as airfare in six months… In this life, I would do nothing by forgetting God and sports. I am returning that Rs40,000. You may please remember that the job of the Sports Council president is unpaid,” Anju said in the five-page letter to Jayarajan.
“My request is that there shouldn’t be a situation where people who have been in the council’s positions just for six months are being crucified by labeling them as corrupt and people who had occupied the top position for long laughing at us. I now feel that you were misled by somebody that the corruption had taken place during my stint,” she said.
Stating that she wanted a probe into the corruption in the council, Anju asked the Minister not to limit such an inquiry to the six months when she was council president but extend it to the past ten years or more. “There should be a joint action against in corruption in which the government, sports administrators and sports stars should join hands,” the letter said.
Observers are of the view that Anju’s letter to Jayarajan has been written in the context of the corruption allegations leveled by Dasan against her and others who were nominated by the previous government. Dasan, also a CPI(M) man, has already announced his readiness to take up the post of council chief if he is given the chance.
At the same time, the Kerala’s new lDF Government is said to be going ahead with the plan to remove Anju and others nominated by the previous UDF regime from the council and reconstitute the body through the process of election instead of the method of nomination adopted by the former government which had amended rules under the Kerala Sport Act for that.
Amendments to the rules under the Kerala Sports Act to bring in the electoral route are likely to be taken up in the next session of the Assembly. “There is no need to go after rumours. I will tell you about everything at the right time,” Minister Jayarajan told newsmen when asked about the reports on the move to remove Anju and to constitute a new body under amended rules.
Anju, who met Sports Minister Jayarajan on June 7 for the first time after the new Government took charge, had later complained that he had insulted her and other office-bearers of the Sports Council by calling them corrupt and accusing them of being loyal to the party that had nominated them, the Congress.
However, Jayarajan denied Anju’s charge saying that the meeting had gone off well and that she had left him as a “very happy” person. The athlete had personally lodged a complaint against Jayarajan with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, a CPI(M) Politbureau member, but he opted to defend his colleague in the Cabinet and party.
The Government has been of the view that Anju might step down on her own as president before the next meeting of the council, scheduled for June 22 but analysts now say that her letter indicates a resoluteness to fight back. “She may not resign now. Her decision may be to let the Government take a decision,” a senior sports journalist said.