Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala High Court’s decision on Wednesday upholding the judgment discharging Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of all charges in the SNC-Lavalin graft case has come as a major political victory for him.
Vijayan and his party CPI (M) are now in a celebratory mood as they always maintained that the case was politically motivated.
Veteran CPI (M) leader V S Achuthanandan who openly spoke against Vijayan in relation to the case has not even issued a statement after the court order.
The high court order has silenced his critics within the party and now Vijayan is the unchallenged leader of the state unit of the party.
It also picked on the CBI, saying that the agency only made Vijayan an accused while there were other ministers who interacted with the scam-tainted company, thereby strengthening his position politically.
The CBI court’s discharge in 2013 had paved the way for his re-entry into electoral politics after a gap of about 15 years.
After the verdict, Vijayan said that he was happy that the truth came out, that it was a political witch-hunt against him and the CBI was under political pressure to make him an accused.
“There has been a constant witch-hunt against me. They tried to witch hunt CPI (M) through me. HC said that I was picked though several power ministers interacted with the company. Everyone knows that CBI did this because of the political pressure on them. I am happy that the truth has won. I believed that judiciary will find the truth,” he said.
He added that the CPI (M)'s central committee had earlier said that this is a politically motivated case.
“I thank my party and comrades for standing by me and believing in me. People had understood this truth earlier itself, it is evident from the support they gave me during elections,” he said.
CPI (M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan also echoed Vijayan’s sentiments.
“UDF handed over the case to CBI with the intention of politically finishing off a top CPM leader. Despite the vigilance bureau giving a clean chit to Pinarayi, the then Oommen Chandy government went for a CBI probe on the eve of assembly elections with ulterior political motives. The verdict clearly exposes how the CBI was misused against political opponents. At least now the Centre should stop misusing CBI for political needs,” he said.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala said that the truth will prevail ultimately.
“CBI will be filing an appeal in the Supreme Court. Let the SC decide the future of this case. I am happy about the HC order, the CBI court had totally exempted all the accused in this case, but now HC has said that three of them should face the trial,” he said.
“Even Jayalaltiha and Lalu Prasad Yadav were exonerated by lower courts but got the punishment from Supreme Court,” he added.
The case pertains to an Rs 250-crore deal with Kerala State Electricity Board and Canadian company SNC-Lavalin in 1995, when Vijayan was state power minister for the renovation of three hydro power projects in Pallivasal, Shenkulam and Panniyar. The state ended up paying about Rs 374 crore.
There were allegations that the deal led to a loss to the state exchequer, with even the CAG report in 2005 making the accusation and held that the deal did not yield gains due to technical defects in the equipment renovated which in turn did not lead to an improvement in power generation.
As part of the agreement, the company had offered a financial assistance of Rs 98 crore for the Malabar Cancer Centre but the institution received only Rs 8.98 crore.
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