Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala has accused the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) of having attempted to scrub out incriminating evidence in the gold smuggling case.
If revealed, the material would expose the dubious links of top persons in the administration with smugglers and terror financiers.
He said the Chief Secretary had on July 13 ordered the replacement of the surveillance camera network at the Secretariat based on the false premise that lightning had damaged the system.
“There was no lightning this month in Thiruvananthapuram. The Chief Secretary’s order has evoked suspicion. It can only be viewed as a move to erase video evidence of the free run the smugglers and their accomplices had in the Secretariat, the IT Department and the CMO,” he said.
Mr. Chennithala said the Chief Secretary had attempted to justify the use of government emblem by the Chief Minister's IT fellow, who was removed from service as the gold smuggling scandal erupted in the public domain.
The private person had travelled in a car with a government board. He used the State's emblem on his visiting card and letter pads. In fact, the IT fellow was a private person contracted by the IT Department at an unjustifiably high salary afforded by taxpayers. The Chief Minister's close aid had violated the Emblems and Names (Prohibition of Improper Use) 1950.
The twin probe by the Customs and the NIA into the smuggling of gold in air cargo addressed to the UAE consulate here had come embarrassingly closed to the CMO.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had to drop his trusted aide, M. Sivasankar from the post of Principal Secretary after an investigation revealed that he had recommended the second accused in the gold smuggling case, Swapna Suresh, for a plum post in Space Project, an ambitious initiative by the IT Department helmed by Mr. Vijayan.
The scandal had also exposed Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan's association with the "controversial woman," he said. The Opposition has given notice for a resolution seeking his removal.
The Chief Minister was wildly blaming the Opposition for the pandemic because his administration had abjectly failed in controlling the COVID-19 outbreak. Mr. Vijayan had hired a public relations agency to put a shine on his tall claim that the government had kept the COVID-19 at bay.
The Chief Minister also used his COVID-19 briefing as a political platform to berate the Opposition. He said Mr. Vijayan had created a ‘consultancy raj’ in the Secretariat. The private regime had taken over the reins of the government, bypassing due decision-making process.
