Thiruvananthapuram: A day after what he termed an "electrifying" election victory, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to rein in the central investigating agencies.
In his missive, Vijayan said the central agencies had set aside their responsibilities and were busy engaged in ways to tarnish the image of the state government. "Their desperation to fish out something outside the ambit of their probe would only end up destroying their credibility," the chief minister said.
The hint was that they were playing politics. He said the agencies were picking certain portions of the statements given by the accused and the witnesses and were leaking them to the media. "When they issue a summons, it becomes news even before it reaches the person it was addressed to," the chief minister said.
He said the investigating agencies were doing everything other than conducting an effective and coordinated probe into gold smuggling.
"Even after five months, they have not been able to find the people who had despatched the gold nor those who had received it. They have still not been able to get hold of some of the accused, and those suspected as accused, in foreign countries," he said.
Vijayan also pointed out the contradictions in the Enforcement Directorate's probe. Initially, the ED had said the money found in the bank locker of an accused were the proceeds of gold smuggling but later said it was commission received from a project contractor.
The chief minister told the prime minister that the ED had violated all federal limits when it called for all the documents related to the Life Mission project. The ED summons to Life Misson was also in contravention of the Supreme Court verdict.
The chief minister pointed out that the High Court had already stayed for two months the CBI's attempt to investigate Life Misson officials. Further, he said the ED had sought all documents related to major projects like K-FON (Kerala Fibre Optic Nework) and electric vehicles.
"This would stall Kerala's development, and destroy the morale of honest and hardworking officials," he told the prime minister.