Thiruvananthapuram: The investigative agency that the CPM and the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan were desperately trying to keep away has also finally entered the fray to look into the controversies surrounding the Life Mission project.
The CBI investigation into the project has put the party and the government in a spot of bother. The case is already being investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Customs Department, the Income-tax Department, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), and the Intelligence Bureau. Now, finally, the CBI, the central agency with the power to strike the biggest blow, has also joined the investigations.
To borrow the words of CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran, seven central agencies are now “roaming around the Secretariat”.
This is an ordeal that no government in Kerala has ever faced. When the Chief Minister himself is the executive chairman of the Life Mission, it is natural that inquiry will knock on his doors. The Life Mission investigation comes when the CBI probe into the Lavalin case continues to haunt Vijayan. The Opposition has, in fact, described the Life Mission scam as the 'second Lavalin’.
If news reports then were filled with the name of Technicalia, the consultant for the Lavalin project, the company in the middle of the controversy now is Unitac, a contract construction firm. In both cases, the matters of investigations are violations in signing agreements with foreign entities and the utilisation of funds.
It is not acceptable to the Left government that the funds raised by the Chief Minister from the UAE to help Kerala were handled by some middlemen and fraudsters and were squandered away in the form of commissions. That is why the Chief Minister admitted that there were problems in the Life Mission scheme.
The Chief Minister was eager for the prime minister to announce a proper central probe into the gold smuggling case. But it is noteworthy that the CPI (M) has been strongly opposed to a CBI probe into the Life Mission scheme. The party believes that there is politics behind the decision to initiate investigations through central agencies. The CPM will now start speaking out against other inquiries too.
A similar sentiment emerged in the CPI executive committee, which the party’s state secretary Kanam Rajendran shared with CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.
