Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan met the press after a hiatus of six months and fielded a barrage of questions ranging from corruption charges against his family members, Congress’s demand to investigate the alleged political conspiracy to falsely implicate the late Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in a sexual misconduct case, rumours about an imminent Cabinet reshuffle, and cooperative sector corruption.
Mr. Vijayan said an Income Tax department forum staffed by Central government officials appeared to have a political axe to grind against him and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) by imputing financial wrongdoing in the legal and transparent transactions between his daughter’s IT firm and a mining company based in Kochi.
He said the forum had passed the order without hearing his daughter, who, in the first place, was not a party to the dispute.
Mr. Vijayan said anti-Left forces abetted by the right-wing corporate media wanted to get to him by pulling the Chief Minister’s Office and his family into their machinations. However, the plot would not pass muster with the people. “I am inured to such calumnious campaigns to destroy me because I have done no wrong,” Mr. Vijayan said.
Mr. Vijayan denied he had accepted funds from the mining firm. “I do not know the firm or its CEO. The IT forum blindly concluded that the acronym PV in the firm’s payment ledger was me. It could be anybody. The media and the Opposition amplified the lie,” Mr. Vijayan said.
He said the Congress feared to unequivocally demand a criminal inquiry into the alleged 2021 plot to falsely implicate the late Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in a sexual misconduct case.
“The Congress is in two minds. It knows the demand will backfire and expose the power struggle in the previous UDF government that caused the case in the first place. I mildly reminded Congress leaders by raking up the past, they would hurt their leader’s memory more and not me. The Congress need not lean its fights on the LDF’s shoulders,” Mr. Vijayan said.
He said an imminent Cabinet reshuffle was a figment of the media’s imagination. The LDF would honour its commitment to allies. Mr. Vijayan laughed away media speculation that he would shuffle Cabinet posts held by CPI(M) ministers.
The Chief Minister said the Enforcement Directorate inquiries into cooperative sector banks and CPI(M) politicians at their helm dovetailed with a larger conspiracy to destroy Kerala’s storied cooperative sector. He sought the support of the public sans politics to resist the move.
