Kerala’s Opposition Leader V S Achuthanandan has said Chief Minister Oommen Chandy should return the United Nations award for public service in the wake of reports that his office had exerted influence to secure it.
Mr. Chandy should return the award or the UN should take it back, he said.
The Chief Minister received the award at a ceremony in Bahrain on June 27.
Mr. Achuthanandan said in a statement on Monday that the award was secured through > self-nomination in violation of the relevant norms. The Chief Minister’s mass contact programme for which he won the award was a ‘fraud’ and its only beneficiaries were persons like Biju Radhakrishnan and Saritha S Nair, the accused in the solar panel scam, he alleged.
A total of 1.5 lakh petitions received at the mass contact programme in 2011 were still awaiting solution, he said.
