Leader of the Opposition V.S. Achuthanandan has declared solidarity with the victims of the alleged land scam involving Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s former gunman Salim Raj and said the courts of law are afraid to name Mr. Chandy in the case.
Left Democratic Front (LDF) workers welcomed Mr. Achuthanandan with loud sloganeering as he arrived at the Kadakampally village area in the capital to see the landholdings reportedly listed as involved in the scam.
People who had reportedly lost their land narrated how their land had got alienated without their knowledge and sought his intervention so that the guilty were punished. Mr. Achuthanandan, who was accompanied by CPI(M) district secretary Kadakampally Surendran and leaders of various other LDF constituents, told reporters after listening to the grievances that even courts were afraid to speak about the Chief Minister’s link with the scam.
The courts, he said, were stepping back as though before a serpent whenever the question linking the Chief Minister with the scam came up, he added.
Mr. Achuthanandan’s visit to Kadakampally came as a prelude to the LDF’s decision to launch an agitation over the land scam. CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan would inaugurate a convention over the issue here on Sunday.
