THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In the raging controversy on Life Mission housing project, it is additional chief secretary (home) T K Jose, who was the earlier local self-government (LSG) secretary, and U V Jose, CEO of the mission, who have landed in a soup. While both bureaucrats are known to have an excellent track record, they were allegedly forced to expedite the file movement owing to pressure from M Sivasankar, former principal secretary to the CM.
The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on July 11 last year by U V Jose and Dr Mohammed Ateeq Al Falahi, general secretary, UAE Red Crescent. The same morning, T K Jose had asked the Life Mission CEO to expedite the file movement as the UAE Red Crescent delegation which was already in the capital city was expected to meet the chief minister in the evening. This revealed the amount of pressure the two bureaucrats had faced from the CMO. A government source close to them two bureaucrats told TNIE that they were pressured to expedite the formalities to sign the MoU on a war footing at the behest of Sivasankar.
“Though officials of an international agency like UAE Red Crescent were arriving to sign the MoU with the government, the Life Mission CEO came to know of it at the eleventh hour. Everything was stage managed by Sivasankar and Swapna Suresh, a key accused in the gold smuggling case. If not for Covid-19, this scam would not have surfaced and by now 140 families would have occupied the flats at Wadakkanchery in Thrissur,” said the source.
The law department had also sought a clarification on who would take responsibility for the contract if any issues cropped up after the project was started. It should have been a policy decision, fixing the responsibility, it had pointed out. Though the MoU mentioned that there would be a follow-up contract, the LDF government did not come out with any such contract.
T K Jose had been at the helm of the LSG department for long. Prior to that, he had served as the chairman of Coconut Development Board Corporation during which time he had earned the title of ‘Neera Man’ for popularising Neera brand. He had also served as the executive director of Kudumbashree and had succeeded in bringing 30 lakh-plus families under its fold.
U V Jose hogged the limelight during his tenure as Kozhikode district collector during the floods in 2018 and 2019 and later when Nipah outbreak rattled the district. His dedication to work saw actor Tovino Thomas depicting the lead character fashioned after him in the Malalayalam flick ‘Virus’. For these reasons, bureaucratic circles are fuming at the way in which they have been pushed into notoriety now.