The Congress on Thursday attempted to seize the moral high ground by emotively ratcheting up its demand for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the alleged governmental plot to ensnare the late former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in an intensely hurtful and defaming sexual misconduct case ahead of the 2021 Assembly elections.
Given the outpouring of public grief following Chandy’s death and the decisive win of his son and political heir, Chandy Oommen, in the Puthuppally Assembly byelection, the Congress sensed the demand would appeal to the ordinary person’s sense of justice.
Moreover, the party felt the narrative that Chandy was a martyr to a vicious and pitiless Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] conspiracy in his autumn years would transcend politics and resonate among families.
Articulating the demand for a CBI inquiry, Leader of Opposition V. D. Satheesan sought to cast Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan as the fountainhead of the alleged conspiracy.
He rejected Mr. Vijayan’s assurance that the government would investigate the supposed plot if the Opposition appealed with relevant records. Mr. Satheesan said the Congress did not trust Mr. Vijayan to inquire the plot of his own making.
He alleged that Mr. Vijayan lied to the Assembly by stating that the government did not have the CBI’s recent court filing signalling the existence of a well-entrenched plot to vilify Chandy with an eye on the 2021 Assembly polls.
“The government prosecutor had received a copy of the CBI’s damning report on June 19,” Mr Satheesan said.
He said the CBI report belied the CP(M) claim that two successive Home Ministers in the previous Oommen Chandy government sought to wrong-foot the leader by pressuring the police to implicate the former CM’s office. Neither does the report mention CPI(M) leader V.S. Achuthanandan’s alleged role in the plot.
Mr. Satheesan said a Left Democratic Front (LDF) legislator and his stooges had conspired with top CPI(M) leaders to witch-hunt Chandy.
They paid the petitioner to submit a fabricated complaint against Chandy and other top Congress leaders. Mr. Vijayan ignored several State police inquiries that dismissed the woman’s charges as false and muscled her dubious petition through the cabinet for a CBI inquiry. Nevertheless, the agency rejected the petition, terming it patently false and malicious.
CPI(M) State Secretary M. V. Govindan said the Congress demand for a CBI inquiry would open a Pandora’s box of past wrongdoings that would return to haunt the UDF. The fratricidal bloodletting in the Congress spawned the case. The LDF had no role in the fiasco.
