COURT ORDERS PROBE AGAINST SRI OOMMEN CHANDY

COURT ORDERS PROBE AGAINST

SRI OOMMEN CHANDY

The Special Court on Monday,8^th August,2011, rejected the Vigilance report which stated that chief minister Oomen Chandy cannot be included as an accused in the palmolein case. The Vigilance Court has ordered a probe to ascertain role of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the 1992 palmolein oil import deal. It gave a direction to submit the detailed report within 3 months and probe the involvement of Oommen Chandy, who was the finance minister then, in the palmoil import case.  The court dismissed the report considering three things. Oommen Chandy, who was the financial minister then, had signed in the direction forwarded by Food Minister TH Musthafa wanting to include palmoil import as a special subject in the cabinet meet. Next, the file relating to the import was lying in the finance minister's office for one and half months and thirdly Chandy was aware of levying a 15 % service tax.

The Vigilance report has stated that as Oommen Chandy is not involved in the case, his name cannot be included in the accused list. During the continued probe, no fresh clues or involvement of more people were found. The report also added that based on the chargesheet, former Food Minister T H Musthafa and others may be enquired. The report was presented to S Jagadeesh, judge of special Vigilance court, Thiruvananthapuram, by Vigilance SP N Sasidharan. The SP submitted the report after getting the approval from the Vigilance Director. The report said that the it was the policy decision of the government to import palmolein. And that was dually endorsed by the Cabinet. It was decided to import palmolein to resurrect the financially starved civil supplies corporation. No new persons could be included as accused. There are no evidences against anybody. The continued probe was unable to find anything new other than what is present in the charge sheet, said the report submitted by the Vigilance SP to the special court.

The palm oil case relates to the import of 15,000 tonne of palmoil from a Singapore-based firm and the vigilance found a loss of Rs 2.32 cr to the exchequer. The first accused in the case was former chief minister K Karunakaran. His name was deleted from the accused list after his demise. T H Musthafa, former chief secretary S Padmakumar, former additional chief secretary Zacchariah Mathew, former Civil Supplies MD Jiji Thomas, directors of Palmoil company V Sadasivan and Sivaramakrishnan and former Vigilance Commissioner P J Thomas were the other accused in the case.

                                                                           Prof. John Kurakar