The Communist Party of India (CPI) on Thursday expelled the former Kandala Service Cooperative Bank president N. Bhasurangan from the organisation’s primary membership after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) detained him for questioning on lending and deposit fraud-related money laundering charges.
The CPI also sought to politically distance itself from the embattled leader by removing him from the post of administrative convener, Milma.
CPI Thiruvananthapuram district secretary Mangode Radhakrishnan denied that the party had protected Mr. Bhasurangan despite the Registrar of Cooperative Societies flagging large-scale financial fraud that depleted the bank’s assets by an estimated ₹100 crore during 2015-2021. He said the party had earlier demoted Mr. Bhasurangan from the district executive to the mandalam committee.
The CPI’s disciplinary action against Mr. Bhasurangan stood in stark contrast to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)‘s political decision to shield its apparatchiks facing a comparable inquiry in the Karuvannur Service Cooperative Bank scam in Thrissur.
A Left Democratic Front (LDF) insider pointed out that the CPI could ill afford to ignore that scores of cooperative bank members who lost their life savings due to the society’s insolvency were party supporters. At least one of them had committed suicide. The bank owed depositors an estimated ₹173 crore but failed to muster resources to redeem the debts.
Eye on Lok Sabha poll
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) used the alleged corruption to assail the CPI with an eye on hampering the party’s prospects in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency in 2024.
Meanwhile, ED officials hospitalised Mr. Bhasurangan after he said he felt queasy during the question. The hospital authorities have shifted him to the intensive care unit.
The ED also inspected the residents of former bank secretaries Shantakumari Rajendran and Mohan Chandran and that of a bank collection agent. So far, the agency has recorded no arrests.
Cooperation Minister V.N. Vasavan termed the ED’s inspection politically motivated and superfluous. “The Cooperative department had unearthed the fraud and ordered the police to register cases,” he said.
The ED reckoned the police investigation into the financial fraud as an actionable predicate offence to register a money-laundering case.
BJP State president K. Surendran termed CPI’s “face-saving exercise” belated. He said the party had lost its moral authority as a corrective force in the LDF. He alleged that a CPI Minister and several top party apparatchiks had profited from the scam.
