The beleaguered Kerala Chief Minister has suffered a major legal setback with the Thrissur Vigilance Court rejecting the State Government’s request to withdraw the palmolein case.

In the order, which has caused acute embarrassment to the United Democratic Front Government, vigilance special judge K Haripal said that consent to withdraw the case could frustrate the process of law, adding that it was in public interest that the case should come to a logical conclusion. Also, the government’s legal adviser was not competent to seek withdrawal of the case, the judge observed.

The State Government has decided to appeal against the vigilance court order, and the next hearing is slated for February 22.

A jubilant leader of the opposition, VS Achuthanandan promptly claimed that Chandy’s fear of being listed as an accused had induced him to try and seek withdrawal of the case. It is a personal victory for VS, who has been waging a protracted legal battle in the case for the last 22 years. Incidentally, a VS plea to include Chandy in the list of the accused in the case is pending before the Supreme Court.

The order has also put VS, who had been sidelined in the wake of the CBI court verdict giving State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan a reprieve in the SNC Lavalin case, back on the centre-stage. VS supporters are rightly claiming that the latest court order has come as a shot in the arm for Achuthanandan in his single-minded fight against entrenched corruption of UDF leaders.

State CPI secretary Pannian Ravindran has also demanded the resignation of the CM, saying that he had no moral right to continue as the CM in the light of the order of the vigilance court judge.

This is the second time that the state government’s plea to withdraw the case has been dismissed by the vigilance court. The first dismissal of the plea came in 2011 when the Thiruvananthapuram Vigilance Court ordered further inquiry into the case, including the role of Oommen Chandy. That order had forced Chandy to hand over the vigilance portfolio to his trusted aide and then home minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan.

The case pertains to the import of the government’s decision to import palmolein much above international price from a Malaysian company in Singapore in 1991, when K. Karunakaran was the Chief Minister.

The then leader of the opposition, V. S. Achuthanandan had accused the government of grave irregularities in the matter while raising the issue in the state assembly in 1992. Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who was then the finance minister, was accused of having a role in the import along with Karunakaran. VS’s case was that against a prevailing market rate of 392.25 dollars per metric tone, the government had signed a deal for 405 dollars per metric tonne, causing a loss of Rs 2.32 crore to the state exchequer.

This is the second judicial rap on the knuckles of the CM and the Congress-led UDF Government in the New Year. The Kerala High Court wanted to know why the State Government has not seized the expensive clothes of solar scam accused Saritha Nair, which have been purchased using defrauded money.

The court’s observation came while hearing a petition seeking a CBI probe into the land grab cases involving the Chief Minister’s former gunman, Salim Raj. Justice Harun Al Rashid said that section 102 of the CrPC allows the police to seize property in cases related to cheating. And in this case, a police report says that Saritha had purchased clothes worth Rs 13 lakh using the money looted from the people on the promise of installing solar panels.

The State Government had imported 15,000 tonnes of palmolein at 402 dollars per tonne from the Singapore-based Power and Energy Limited. It may be mentioned that during the same period the State Trading Corporation had imported palmolein at 392 dollars per tone. And the assembly committee and the CAG had pointed out the impropriety in the import deal.

The case almost faded out with the death of K Karunakaran. Among the accused are the then food secretary P J Thomas, the then civil supplies commissioner and present director general of the Sports authority of India, Jiji Thomson and former civil supplies minister T J Musthafa. (IPA Service)