Kannur: Prashanth TV, the "entrepreneur", whose application for a fuel station was taken up by the Kannur District Panchayat President P P Divya, is an employee of Kannur Government Medical College at Pariyaram, and so the government should take action against him for running a private business, said the Congress's employee association of the medical college.
In a statement, the Kerala Non-Gazetted Officers' Association's Kannur medical college unit said Prashanth worked as a helper in the electrical section of the medical college. "As a government employee, he cannot run a private business. If he had paid Rs 98,500 as a bribe as he claimed, he should be booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act," the association wrote to the Director of Medical Education.
When contacted, Prashanth said that when the government took over Pariyaram Medical College in March 2019, it absorbed the doctors and nurses as its employees. "The others like me were not absorbed," he said. I was planning to quit my job at the medical college once the petrol pump started functioning," he said.
P I Sreedharan, the president of Kerala NGO Association's Kannur Government Medical College unit, who issued the statement demanding action against Prashanth, agreed with him. "We are not yet absorbed by the government, but our salaries are paid by the government. And some government rules apply to us, too," he said.
Sreedharan said that Prashanth's salary would not be high enough to start a fuel station. "The government should investigate his source of income, too," he said. On Monday, Divya gatecrashed into the farewell meeting of Kannur ADM Naveen Babu K and raised corruption charges against the official.
She said that the ADM sat on the entrepreneur's application for a no-objection certificate for his fuel station sanctioned by Bharat Petroleum for six months. He gave the NOC just before he was transferred to his home district, and she knew how he gave the NOC, implying that he took a bribe for it. As she left in a huff, she said that she would reveal the details in two days.
Tuesday morning, Naveen Babu was found dead in his quarters in Kannur. The opposition alleged that the official took his own life because Divya publicly humiliated him and accused him of corruption.
The CPM's Kannur Secretariat -- the highest decision making body of the party in the district -- issued a statement saying Divya was only making a "constructive criticism of corruption" but she could have avoided saying it at his farewell.
Revenue Minister K Rajan, however, said Naveen Babu was an upright and dependable official, and the department had received no complaint against him. The minister's statement contradicted Prashanth's statement that he WhatsApp his complaint against Naveen Babu to the Chief Minister on October 10.
Employees, cutting across political affiliations, protested in Kannur and Kasaragod Collectorate and demanded action against the culprits responsible for Naveen Babu's death.
