THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Congress has urged the LDF Government to scrap the Vizhinjam agreement and ink a new one if the Chief Minister is fully convinced that there is corruption behind it. Asking to go ahead with the announced judicial probe, the political affairs committee (PAC) of the party which met here on Tuesday decided not to allow the Left Government to derive political mileage from it.
The meet also decided not to leave the matter in the hands of former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy alone, who was countering a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General single handedly, ever since it was tabled recently in the Assembly. The PAC meet told the government there is a provision in the Letter of Award of the Agreement to cancel it without paying any compensation to the concessionaire if corruption is detected at any point of time.
“Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the LDF are trying to create a public impression of corruption behind the agreement and at the same time want to take the credit of implementing it. The Chief Minister is adopting double standards to derive political mileage. Pinarayi had said the CAG findings were serious and announced a probe. If he has such a conviction that there is corruption, the agreement should be terminated and the judicial probe should be taken forward.
A new agreement should be signed and the project should be implemented without delay,” the meet felt, according to KPCC president M M Hassan. Hassan said the replies of the Pinarayi Government to the CAG vindicate there isn’t anything fishy in the agreement.
However, Hassan said the Vizhinjam agreement didn’t come up for discussions in the party, prior to its signing. K Muraleedharan MLA asked Sudheeran whether he hadn’t given in writing to him to discuss the Vizhinjam agreement features in the PAC meet, when the latter was the KPCC president. Sudheeran was reportedly evasive on it.
‘Slap case on Amit Shah’
The PAC meet flayed the casteist remarks of BJP national president Amit Shah against the Father of the Nation.
‘Govt failed to address livelihood issues’
The meet criticised the LDF Government for not taking any steps to better the lives of the people in the state, but only finding glory in advertisements and renaming schemes in vogue during the tenure of the predecessor UDF Government.