Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s media adviser John Brittas appears to have kicked up a political row ahead of the Opposition’s no-confidence motion against the government in the Assembly on August 24.
Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala on Friday demanded an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation into a sensational "disclosure" by Mr. Brittas on Kairali television on Wednesday. He had claimed that a private builder had paid ₹4.5 crore as kickback to bag the government contract to build 140 dwellings for homeless families at Vadakanchery under the LIFE Mission scheme. The UAE Red Crescent had sponsored the ₹20-crore project.
Mr. Chennithala said Mr. Brittas had said the builder had delivered the bribe to a suspect in the UAE consulate-linked gold smuggling case. Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac and Law Minister A.K. Balan had endorsed Mr. Brittas’s statement.
View of the CM
The views of the trio were in variance with the stated position of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who had repeatedly claimed there was no corruption in the deal. Mr. Chennithala alleged that Mr. Vijayan's former Principal Secretary M. Sivasankar had fast-tracked the deal at the behest of the CM’s Office. Swapna Suresh, second accused in the gold smuggling case, played a pivotal role in the deal.
Mr. Vijayan had ignored the red flags raised by the Law Department, which should have alerted the administration to the legal pitfalls, he said.
