Corruption charge: Vigilance records statement of Abdullakutty
KANNUR: The Vigilance team investigating the corruption allegations behind the light and sound show at Kannur Fort has taken the statement of BJP national vice-president AP Abdullakutty. On Friday, a Vigilance team led by DySP Babu Peringoth took the statement from the leader at his house at Pallikkunnu. It was alleged that crores of rupees was swindled in the name of the project under which a light and sound show was started at the time of UDF government led by Oommen Chandy.
At that time Abdullakutty was the MLA of Kannur constituency. Vigilance had got secret information in connection with cor ruption in the project , said Babu Peringoth. In the state budget, the UDF government had set aside Rs 3.8 crore of which nearly Rs 2 crore was spent during the first phase of the project. The project was inaugurated on February 19, 2016, by the then chief mini s ter Oommen Chandy. The contract for the project was given to a private company under the supervision of district tourism department.
The show was conducted only on the inaugural day and later the entire project was shelved. As the project didn’t take off well, corruption allegations were raised in connection with it. Meanwhile, Abdullakutty said that though there was corruption, he had not played any role in that project. “As an MLA of the constituency at that time, I had put forward this project before the government.
Apart from that, I had not intervened in that project at any stage of the implementation”, he said. He also said that he had informed the then tourism minister A P Anil Kumar regarding the corruption. “When Ramachandran Kadannappally became minister, I had informed him about this,” said Abdullakutty. “He too had not taken any action in connection with the corruption allegations”, he said.