Former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy on Tuesday wrote to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan urging him to expand the terms of reference of the proposed judicial inquiry into the Adani deal for the development of the Vizhinjam Multipurpose Deep-sea International Container Transshipment terminal by including four more points related to the procedures adopted by the V.S. Achuthanandan government in appointing the International Finance Corporation (IFC) as tender adviser and awarding the contract.
He also wanted the Chief Minister to include the existing terms of agreement (with the Adani group while he was Chief Minister as a continuation of the traffic study conducted by the IFC) and the terms of agreement approved by the LDF government in 2010. The judicial inquiry should go into the procedures adopted in appointing the IFC as tender adviser and its terms of contract. The probe should also focus on whether the recommendations of the report prepared by the IFC and approved by the State government as per G.O.(MS)No. 75/10/F&PD were beneficial to the State and the veracity of the tender and procedures adopted in selecting the bidders and the terms of agreement approved by the government on April 12, 2011 on the basis of the IFC’s recommendations.
Mr. Chandy welcomed the Cabinet decision to appoint a three-member judicial commission headed by retired judge C.N. Ramachandran Nair and to go head with the implementation of the Vizhinjam project. “I agree with the government if it finds it appropriate to include any other matter reflected in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General under the purview of the judicial probe,” he said.
Mr. Chandy did not mention Mr. Achuthanandan by name in the statement he issued based on the letter he wrote to Mr. Vijayan. According to sources close to Mr. Chandy, the Chief Minister, who has since promised to go ahead with the Vizhinjam project, would not miss the political point the former Chief Minister has sought to make
