Leader of the Opposition in the Kerala Assembly Ramesh Chennithala on Saturday moved an anti-corruption court in Thiruvananthapuram to investigate Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Excise Minister T. P Ramakrishnan on the charge that they had overruled cautionary advice from officials and upended a 19-year-old liquor policy to sanction new distilleries and breweries in the private sector to companies they favoured on the sly.
Mr. Chennithala appeared before the Enquiry Commissioner and Special Judge, D. Ajith Kumar, and argued that he had ample evidence on record to prove that the duo did not consult the Cabinet and acted in secrecy. They also kept their coalition partners in the dark, he claimed. They invited applications in secret from the companies they preferred for corrupt reasons without reversing the 1999 law that banned new liquor making units in Kerala.
For instance, a private firm applied for licence to start a distilling, compounding and bottling unit in 2017 and Mr Ramakrishnan sat on the file for seven months instead of rejecting it outright. In June 2018, he permitted the application. The same month when the State was in the grip of a catastrophic flood, Mr. Vijayan approved the firm’s bid, Mr. Chennithala claimed.
He alleged that Mr Ramakrishnan, at a stroke, reversed the liquor policy and kept it a secret from the public grappling with the monsoon havoc. By allowing only four preferred companies to apply for the permits, Mr Ramakrishnan had denied other potential bidders a level playing field.
'CM attempted to hoodwink the public'
Mr. Chennithala said Mr. Vijayan had attempted to hoodwink the public by maintaining that the government had only given preliminary approval to the liquor makers to set up shop in the State. On the contrary, the government had given full permission for three breweries and one distillery. There was no provision in the liquor law to accord “sanction in principle or as a preliminary approval” as falsely claimed by Mr. Vijayan.
The judge said he required time to study whether the court could entertain an application rejected by the High Court and the Governor. He also asked whether Section 17 (a), which stated that prior government sanction was mandatory to conduct any further inquiry in a particular category of corruption cases, had any pertinence to the allegations raised by Mr Chennithala.
The court postponed his plea for a full hearing on January 10.
