The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State committee forcefully dismissed the allegation by the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that the Union Corporate Affairs Ministry’s probe into the company affairs of the now defunct IT consultancy firm of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s daughter T. Veena have put the government and the party in the dock.
CPI(M) State secretary M.V. Govindan said the civil inquiry into the legitimate and on-record transactions of the IT firm lost all sensational value if “you subtracted the Chief Minister from the equation”. Mr. Govindan said the Congress in Kerala had devolved into the ideological echo chamber of the BJP by seeking to lend legitimacy to the Centre’s political witch-hunt against Mr. Vijayan.
Monthly payments
The CPI(M)‘s sally in defence of the government came close on the heels of the Congress and BJP’s attempts to portray the monthly payments received by Ms. Veena’s IT consultancy from a Kochi-based mining company during the 2017-21 period, an estimated ₹1.7 crore in monthly payments, as a classic example of profiting from proximity to power.
The high-profile Central inquiry has its provenance in an Income Tax (I-T) tribunal decision last year that the mining firm could not legitimately claim an input tax credit for a range of payments, including those made to Ms. Veena’s firm and a galaxy of politicians across the aisle.
The CPI(M) said the I-T tribunal had questionably concluded that Ms. Veena’s firm had provided no tangible IT services to the mining company without notifying or hearing her and hauling her into a dispute in which she was not an original party. Notably, the inquiry also covered the State-run Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC), which has a considerable stake in the mining company but, according to the Congress, has yet to claim its shareholder profit for reasons unknown.
On Sunday, BJP State president K. Surendran sought to seize the moral high ground and upstage the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) in the controversy by alleging that the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leaders had also received huge backhanders from the mining firm in lieu of political protection for its environmentally hazardous quarrying operations.
He noted that the mining firm had detailed the payments before the I-T tribunal and sought a tax reprieve for the “bribes”. He said the Congress condoned the handouts to the UDF leaders while making token noises of protest against Mr. Vijayan.
