The past indeed caught up with former Kerala minister and popular leader R Balakrishna Pillai when the Supreme Court Bench of Justice P Sathasivam and Justice B S Chauhan on Thursday sentenced him and two co-accused to one year’s rigorous imprisonment. With skeletons from the past showing an uneasy trend of tumbling out of the proverbial cupboard, the apex court ruling would make many political, bureaucratic and judicial officials uneasy. If this becomes the rule and not an exception, the country’s perch on top of the corruption ladder will begin to ease however long it may take.
The case pales into insignificance when compared to the 2G Spectrum and the S-band cases where the scams run into lakhs of crores. The Idamalayar hydel project had an initial capex of Rs 23.4 crore and the charge is that Pillai in his capacity as electricity minister along with others conspired with private contractor K P Poulose to artificially escalate the cost of the tunnel connecting the reservoir and the power house as also the surge shaft. Loss to the state power utility was Rs 2.01 crore.
The case began to unravel as a leak occurred during the trial run of the tunnel in July 1985. The issue caught public interest when
In 1990 the Crime Branch filed a chargesheet against 21 accused, including Pillai before the vigilance court. The case was referred to a special court which found 11 of the accused prima facie guilty in 1995 and Pillai, then transport minister resigned. In November 1999, Pillai, former electricity board chairman K Ramabhadran Nair and contractor P K Sajeevan were sentenced to five years in prison — a verdict overruled by the high court later.
It was the then Opposition leader and present Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan who pursued the case with single-minded determination. Pillai decried it as witch-hunt and settling of scores. Coming as it does close on heels of the Kozhikode sex scandal case involving another key ally, Muslim League’s P K Kunjalikutty, the UDF is suddenly feeling the heat ahead of the April-May Assembly elections.
