Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday said that the UAE Consul General had met him not once but several times, and in most of the meetings Swapna Suresh was also present. "It was usual for the consul-general to come with his secretary (Swapna)," the Chief Minister said during his sunset COVID-19 briefing.
The chief minister did not confirm Swapna's statement to the Enforcement Directorate that he had informally deputed M Sivasankar as the go-to person for the Consulate. Vijayan did not deny it, only said he did not remember.
Nonetheless, he said it would not have been "something out of the ordinary" even if he had done so.
"If I was asked whom to contact in my office, I would have naturally told them to contact Sivasankar as he was my secretary then. It would not have been an extraordinary thing to say. It was only natural," he said.
Vijayan also stressed there was no impropriety in the consul-general meeting the chief minister. "Now people are trying to create a mystery by asking whether it was right for the consul-general to meet the chief minister. There is nothing wrong about it. They can come to meet the chief minister for many things, say to invite me for a function. It is basic courtesy," he said.
The chief minister's words have now put to rest doubts, which the CPM itself had raised, about Swapna's claims to the ED. The argument was that the statement of an accused was not trustworthy.
The CPM even refused to send representatives for late-evening channel debates furious that newsrooms were holding discussions around the unreliable words of an accused.
Though he was not specifically asked the question, the chief minister laughed away Swapna's claim that her connection with Sivasankar began with her visit to the Cliff House to meet the chief minister.
"I cannot say when Sivasankar and Swapna began their contact," he said with an amused smile as if saying that nothing could be more ridiculous than to suggest that the Chief Minister's Office was a kind of matchmaking service.
Swapna had told the ED that it was Sivasankar who had spoken to her about the vacancy in Space Park and had also assured her that he would put in a word with the chief minister.
Vijayan had tackled this claim on October 10 in a very technical manner. "Her statement is very clear. She did not say that I knew about it (Swapna's appointment). She only said that she was told I would be informed," Vijayan said, and added: "This is not something that I knew," he added.
The chief minister still maintains that he knew Swapna Suresh only as an official of the UAE Consulate. He said he knew of her appointment in Space Park only after the gold smuggling scandal broke out.
Interestingly on Tuesday, the chief minister referred to Swapna by her name, unlike on July 7 when he called her "the controversial woman".
On July 7, when the chief minister first talked about Swapna publicly, he had said the IT Department, too, had no direct links with the "controversial woman". "There are various projects under the IT Department. In one of them (Space Park), the controversial woman was given the space selling or marketing responsibility, and that too on a contract basis," he said.
Swapna Suresh was not appointed by the Space Park management directly either. "It was through a placement agency that she was recruited. Such temporary appointments are not unusual. People are recruited through placement agencies in many such projects," he said.
He also said the people who had recruited her would have considered her past experience. "And in these two jobs, one in the UAE Consulate and the other in Air India SATS Services, how can the State Government have any role," he said.
All said, Pinarayi has still not explained how such a person, with a Crime Branch report against her, could be appointed to a sensitive post under the IT Department.