With the Kerala high court on Friday staying the order of the vigilance court to file an FIR against him in the so-called solar power scam, chief minister Oommen Chandy has got a reprieve.
With the Kerala high court on Friday staying the order of the vigilance court to file an FIR against him in the so-called solar power scam, chief minister Oommen Chandy has got a reprieve. This could help Mr Chandy recover some ground when the Assembly election is barely three months away and CPI(M) and BJP were stepping on the gas to mount a massive public agitation against the Congress-led UDF government with a personal attack on the CM in the wake of the vigilance court’s directive.
However, it is quite evident that a corruption scandal involving not a few public figures in power, and their associates and hangers-on, has been brewing since about 2011 when Saritha Nair, who along with her partner (who is cooling his heels in prison allegedly for the murder of his wife) had duped scores of businessmen and collected funds from them on the lure of making them partners in what she promised them would be a state-wide solar power business.
The principal instrument she used to impress the business folk was her recently acquired links with men in power who would presumably help her business grow with state assistance. In the light of the facts that have surfaced, and admittedly these would need corroboration, aside from a financial scandal there may well be an unsavoury sexual angle too to the sleazy goings-on.
The sums involved do not appear to be high, but the inference can be drawn that many, including quite possibly office assistants and aides of the CM, had accepted bribes from the solar power entrepreneurs with the promise to help their company. With the sensational case drawing much media attention, the CM was wise to drop his aides whose integrity was rightly being suspected. But Ms Nair, in the end, did not hesitate to name Mr Chandy personally earlier this week.
The cause for relief for the CM following the high court’s intervention is evidently Mr Chandy’s well-deserved reputation for personal integrity through his career as a leading political personality. His basic argument — that although allegations were being made against him and his government, the state exchequer had not lost a penny and that the solar power business duo had not benefited in any manner through the state’s actions — is also likely to have cut ice with the high court, besides the fact that the vigilance court may have paid too much attention to allegations of people who were swindlers seemingly and had thrived by flaunting their connections.
But it is quite extraordinary that as CM Mr Chandy did not take matters in hand long ago and begin to take executive action against those suspected to have accepted bribes from shady operators even if this cost him some political points.
