Wednesday, Sep 03, 2014
Thiruvananthapuram: Faced with a series of setbacks on issues ranging from increasing student intake in schools to a perceived defeat on the issue of cancelling liquor bar licences, Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy on Wednesday hit back at his detractors.
Confronted by the allegation of corruption surrounding clearances for a pollution control project in state-owned titanium producer, Travancore Titanium Products Limited, Chandy said the allegations were being made by vested interests to politically malign him.
A vigilance court in Thiruvananthapuram had ordered that a first information report be registered against Chandy, state home minister Ramesh Chennithala and state public works minister V.K. Ebrahim Kunju and nine others with regard to the approval of the effluent treatment plant at the titanium company with an outlay of Rs 2.5 billion (Dh151.29 million). The Kerala High Court later stayed the vigilance court’s order.
Chandy clarified on Wednesday that he had been involved in the matter during the term of the previous United Democratic Front (UDF) government when the company faced closure for want of an effluent treatment plant.
“The employees, too, had requested that the plant not be shut down. This is a fact known to the leaders of trade unions,” Chandy said, adding that the concerns that the unit would be shut down were removed only after the decision to install an effluent treatment unit was taken.
Taking strong objection to the manner in which the opposition in the state had targeted him with allegations about corruption relating to the effluent treatment plant, Chandy asked why the opposition had not done anything about the issue when it had been in power after the UDF government’s term ended in 2006.
Chandy said it was the opposition that had pursued all follow-up action at the company from the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the effluent treatment plant onwards. The chief minister also took offence at Chennithala being dragged into the controversy, pointing out that Chennithala was neither a minister nor an MLA at the time.
Meanwhile, opposition leader V.S. Achuthanandan alleged that the chief minister and his team had “sold Kerala to corrupt operators”, and that Chandy was clinging on to power despite several adverse observations from the courts.
By Akhel Mathew Correspondent
Gulf News 2014. All rights reserved.
