K Muraleedharan was once considered a prince poised to become the king of Kerala politics but, alas he lost the crown. No other politician in Kerala has ever used his or her father’s name to resurrect their political fortunes as much as Muraleedharan has done.
The Congress legislator, who has been lying low for quite some time, is trying to stage a come back in the state Congress while raising a demand to redeem the honour of his late father, former chief minister K Karunakaran, in connection with the 1994 ISRO espionage case. Karunakaran was forced to step down from the chief minister’s post after he was targeted from within the state Congress for allegedly shielding a few top cops whose names were embroiled in the sensational spy case.
“It is the pain of a son to retrieve the honour of a humiliated father,” Muraleedharan said. Karunakaran’s political future took a beating after the case, though he was not an accused in the case and the court had acquitted all those listed as accused.
Muraleedharan quickly aligned with those acquitted and dashed off a letter recently to chief minister Oommen Chandy. He brought to focus that it was none other than former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao who had plotted Karunakaran’s political fall with the aid of some congress leaders and groups in the state, by directing the ISRO case against him. “My father had told us that Rao could not be trusted at all,” Muraleedharan said.
In his letter, he demanded that the state government should launch a probe on the conspiracy angle against three retired Kerala police officials, including then DIG Siby Mathew. “I firmly believe that the entire gamut of the behind the scene plays related to the case can be unfolded through it,” he said, after the Oommen Chandy led UDF government decided to not recommend any action against the three officers.
Fingers are also being pointed at Defence Minister A K Antony, who succeeded Karunakaran as chief minister in 1995. Veteran Congress leader M M Jacob had said that Defence Minister A K Antony was prominent among those who had pulled the strings. But Muralledharan is extremely careful of not dragging Union Minister A K Antony’s name into the issue, since he fully knows that the Congress high command would intervene and puncture all his plans at the very outset.
Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president Ramesh Chennithala also finds himself in the firing line of Muraleedharana. He said that the refusal of Chennithala to respond to his call for action against the police officials who, according to the CBI, had erred in the investigation into the case was unfortunate. “The KPCC president knows everything about the espionage case. It is strange that he does not break his silence despite that,” Muraleedharan said.
Chennithala responded to the reports on Muraleedharan’s statement by saying that he came to know about his complaint over the matter from media reports. “As it is a politically relevant issue about the Leader (Karunakaran), I had spoken about it with Chief Minister Oommen Chandy,” Chennithala, once known as a political disciple of Karunakaran, said.
Earlier, Muraleedharan had warned off legal action against the government if they failed to act on his demand.
Observers are of the opinion that Muraleedharan is determined to cash in on the standoff between the I-group in the party led by Chennithala and the A-group headed by the chief minister.
Muraleedharan was in political wilderness for many years after launching an outfit along with his father. Later he migrated to the NCP while Karunakaran returned to the Congress. He had to struggle hard to again gain membership in the Congress and it was only a few months before the 2011 polls he could make it.
-Sunday Standard