Bar Bribery scam: Governor wants more info to sanction probe against Congress leaders

Kerala Governor Arif Muhammad Khan has said that the information provided by the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) was not sufficient to sanction a probe against two former ministers, K Babu and V S Sivakumar, in the Bar Bribery scam. The Governor has now sought more details from the VACB.

The preliminary steps for a Vigilance probe into the Bar Bribery scam was initiated on the basis of a fresh set of allegations levelled by Biju Ramesh, a bar owner and hotelier and the former Kerala Bar Hotel Association (KBHA) working president. During the UDF tenure, Ramesh had set off a political storm when he alleged that bar owners had bribed the then Finance Minister K M Mani to keep the bar licence fee low.

Last month, Biju Ramesh said the members of the KBHA had pooled money to bribe prominent figures in the former UDF ministry to stall the plan to increase the bar licence fee from Rs 22 lakh to R 30 lakh. For this, Ramesh said Rs 1 crore was paid to the then KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala, Rs 50 lakh to K Babu, who was then excise minister in the Oommen Chandy cabinet, and Rs 25 lakh to V S Sivakumar, then the health minister.

Chennithala is the leader of the opposition in the assembly now.

Ramesh even said that Babu was paid the money in his office inside the Secretariat.

Since two of the accused were former ministers, the government had sent the VACB's recommendation for a probe to the Governor. Sources said the Governor was not satisfied by the reply given by the VACB for a set of queries he had raised. Now, he has asked for more details.

Sources said the Governor had sought details of investigations that have already been conducted into the bar bribery allegations, the evidence collected as part of these probes, and also wanted to know why the VACB had concluded that there was no evidence to implicate the accused on all the three occasions it had investigated the issue. The Governor also wanted the VACB to furnish details of related cases in the various courts, and the stand taken by the VACB in these courts on the issue.

Chennithala had also written to the Governor saying that the sanction should not be given as the case was politically motivated.

The KBHA, too, has rejected its former working president's allegations and said it had not collected money to bribe Congress leaders.