THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state Congress, which is buoyed with the arrival of spotlessly clean Mullappally Ramachandran as its president, has got a shot in the arm after the Opposition leader trained guns on the government over the allocation of three breweries and a distillery alleging crores had changed hands in the deal and the Chief Minister and Excise Minister are involved.
With Ramesh Chennithala upping the ante and former Chief Minister and AICC general secretary Oommen Chandy following suit with corruption charges against the government, the party is now planning to focus more on corruption charges against the LDF Government. Chennithala told Express, “We will be coming out with more details on corruption of this government. The coming days will be marked by agitations and the truth shall prevail.”
Mullappally added, “Yes we will expose the corrupt deals of the state government and the CPM which heads the combine. The brewery and distillery corruption is the tip of the iceberg and more will follow.”
With the KPCC also coming out against corruption, the Congress seems to be preparing itself for a major offensive against the CPM and the LDF. By virtue of his squeaky clean image and his family background — Mullappally is the son of freedom fighter Mullappally Gopalan — anti-corruption is the major plank with which he can fight the CPM and the LDF Government.
The main Opposition UDF has also come out against the allocation of breweries and distillery and its newly appointed convener Benny Behanan has accused the LDF Government of corruption. Behanan vowed to take it up as a major issue in the coming days.
Mullappally will be convene a urgent meeting of KPCC working presidents, publicity committee chairman K Muraleedharan and Behanan. The party should have the teeth to fight in the streets and an immediate organisational revamp is on the cards and sources told Express the KPCC president is keen there is no excessive influence of group considerations or presence of group managers.
With the party taking up corruption as one of the major issues, it will have to come out on the street for the second level of agitation to get a momentum and for this an organisational revamp is important.Sources indicated the KPCC president will be going in for a change in the Youth Congress leadership as it is the party’s fighting brigade.
Youth Congress state chief Dean Kuriakose will become KPCC secretary and there are possibilities of Shafi Parambil MLA becoming the state president of the Youth Congress.
Sudheeran calls for judicial probe into allocation
T’Puram: Former KPCC chief V M Sudheeran has called for a judicial inquiry, preferably by a sitting judge, into the brewery allocation charge against the government. The sanction for three breweries and a distillery is a blatant violation of the LDF’s poll promise, he said in a letter to the CM. The surreptitious manner in which the deal was done indicates foul play. According to him, the Excise Department’s move to take over land belonging to the Industries Department without keeping the latter in the loop is a complete violation of established norms. Instead of coming up with a weak defence to justify the Excise Department’s omissions, the CM should strike down the order, he said. Sudheeran called for action against those officers who had given wrong information.