Representational imageThis one is an eight-year-old mystery. A Congress leader left New Delhi for Kozhikode with a suitcase full of currency notes. The money - Rs 50 lakh - was meant for the party’s campaign in the Vadakara parliamentary constituency.
When the train reached Kozhikode, half the money was missing! The carrier said he had no clue.
Mullappally Ramachandran won the election but there was no trace of the money meant for his campaign.
The district leadership of the Congress held the carrier responsible for the loss but the leader said he was not prepared to compensate for it. Instead, he suggested that the party lodge a police complaint. He knew very well that the money was unaccounted for.
The party formed an internal inquiry commission to trace the money. The commission gradually faded into oblivion.
This was not a mystery after all. Many of the leaders knew where the money went but they preferred to remain silent. All of them had claimed a share of the loot.
Even the BJP has an array of inquiry commissions doomed to a slow death. The inquiry commission report on the recent cash-for-affiliation scam has stirred a hornet’s nest in the party but it remains to be seen how seriously the report will be taken.
Many of the top leaders have their names featured in previous inquiry reports but they still call the shots in the party.
The most famous among those reports is perhaps the one on allegations of an election subterfuge in 1991. After BJP cadres were accused of cross-voting in the assembly elections, the party formed a committee comprising vice-presidents K. Ayyappan Pillai, Dr Xavier Paul and Palliyara Raman.
The commission’s findings were shocking. The BJP polled only about 4 lakh votes across the 140 assembly constituencies, whereas the party claimed 10.5 lakh votes in the state. The commission gathered enough evidence to retrace the “vote sale” under the aegis of a state leader.
The report, which included the statements of party state president K. Raman Pillai and all district presidents, was sent to the then party president Atal Behari Vajpayee, Murli Manohar Joshi, Sikander Bakht, Sunder Singh Bhandari and other senior leaders. Nothing was heard of the report again. Dr Paul left the party in protest.
The leader who was put in the dock found himself out of the party but he eventually crawled his way back.
The 2005 Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha election also resulted in similar allegations. The Mohan Shankar-led committee looked into the allegations that BJP’s votes were rerouted to the rival camps. R P C Nair and Manjeri Narayanan were the other members of the commission.
The commission found prominent state leaders and district leaders in Thiruvananthapuram guilty and recommended strict disciplinary action against them. No one cared.
Financial irregularities had plagued the BJP for long. The party’s funds were called into question after the 2011 assembly elections. The then Kasaragod district president M. Narayana Bhatt objected to the shady fund-raising but he was shown the door by the state leadership of the party.
The party could not present the expenses related to the campaigning in the Manjeswaram assembly segment. Details of expenses in all the other four constituencies were presented in the district committee after the election. The district committee’s protests were silenced by the state committee.
The then state president V. Muraleedharan kept the district committee office-bearers in the dark, Bhatt said. A month later, the district committee was disbanded by the state leadership.
Rough deal
Something is rotten in Tirur. A gang of real estate dealers, including the CPM’s candidate in the recent election, has been lobbying to get the Kerala government to take over a plot of land they had bought in 2010. They are eyeing a ten-fold profit margin.
The state government is mulling the takeover of the 17-acre plot to build a permanent base for the Malayalam University at Mangattiri in Vettam village. The land is priced at Rs 1.60 lakh per cent, almost 10 times of what the current owners paid for it just seven years ago.
The land owners find ample support from the bureaucrats involved in the deal.
An official meeting attended by the district collector on February 17, 2016 decided to acquire 17 acres and 21 cents of land at Mangattiri. The land owners claimed that the plot commanded a price of Rs 7 lakh per cent. The district collector, however, countered the claim and said that the base value was only Rs 41,110 per cent in the area. Moreover, the plot was in three categories, he said. About six acres of the plot were either water-logged or mangrove fields.
The owners stepped down but wanted the administration to take into consideration all categories of the plot. The administration offered Rs 1.70 lakh per cent on average.
Meanwhile, another group of landowners came up with an offer to sell a similar plot at Rs 1.35 lakh per cent. The university appointed a committee including technical experts to pick the best plot. The committee favored the land at Mangattiri.
The administration settled on the land after further negotiations with the landowners. The price was fixed at Rs 1.60 lakh per cent.
The opposition United Democratic Front alleges that the real estate deal was made with an eye on the proposed university. The CPM, however, puts the blame on the local MLA.
Roving broker-dealers
Representational imageNew Delhi is a fertile ground for broker dealers, who promises everything from admission to the Kendriya Vidyalaya to grant of Padma awards. They manage to stay in business no matter who is in power at the center.
The service is packaged. Visitors from Kerala are offered a place to stay, vehicles to travel around and even a translator to get the job done in various offices.
You just have to pinpoint an agent to get your job done. It could be employment in a central government institution, any kind of approvals from various ministries including petroleum, national highways, telecom and railway.
The modus operandi is time-tested. The agents keep the officers in good humor by treating them in their residences. The person in need of the service would also be present. When the guests reach a settlement, the host demands a commission. A Thiruvananthapuram native, in association with his relative who works in the BJP office, is one of the ring leaders of the racket.
Another agent hails from Alappuzha. He had a major client in an expatriate industrialist from Kerala who wanted a shot at glory. The agent hooked on to the businessman and got him to rent a house in New Delhi for the lobbying.
He offered to make the businessman a Member of Parliament. He pulled some strings and arranged for a meeting between the businessman and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The businessman pumped money as demanded but the Congress had other ideas.
The agent persisted. He offered an assembly seat this time. Even that did not work out. When he sensed that the businessman was becoming impatient, he somehow got him appointed as the head of a public sector enterprise.
The agent surfaced in the capital again after the BJP came to power. He has rented a house in a posh locality in Delhi and restarted his lobbying efforts. BJP and RSS leaders from Kerala are regular visitors in his house. Even IAS officers looking for a plum position frequent the gatherings.
The agent has a reputation for arranging Padma awards for a movie actor and an industrialist.
Agents from Kerala are active in Chennai as well. He duped a Tamil Nadu advertising agency by offering the firm a contract from a profitable central public sector undertaking. The firm paid the agent Rs 45 lakh as the first installment of the fee.
The agent told the firm to prepare a project report to submit before the minister concerned.
The firm prepared a project and got a specialist from Dubai to present the project before the minister. An appointment was fixed at a luxury hotel in Mumbai.
On the day of the appointment, the agent told the firm’s representatives that the minister had to cancel the program. The project was presented before the minister’s private secretary. The official gave the firm a sympathetic ear.
A month passed and there was no word on the contract. The firm’s owner grew suspicious and made some enquiries. He was shocked to learn that the “private secretary” was none other than a friend of the agent!
The firm’s proprietor was crestfallen. He had spent Rs 45 lakh on the phony agent and another Rs 15 lakh on hotel bills and flight tickets. He cornered the fraudster and demanded his money back.
The agent gave him back Rs 25 lakh.
After a few months of follow-up, the ad agency owner found it better to forget the money.
Fraud on display
Kochi’s Marine Drive witnessed a notable exhibition a few months ago. The pavilion built on the Marine Drive was modeled on Taj Mahal. A political leader teamed up with his opponent in a rival party to organize the event.
The leader connected the rich and famous to support the event. The event managers offered Rs 3 lakh profit to anyone who invested Rs 10 lakh. The leader’s associate collected the money from the investors by promising to pay them back the investment and the profit within a month.
The event was a flop show. Many of the investors rued the day they fell for the offer. A few of them persisted and managed to get back some of their investments in installments.
Many others remain silent because the money they contributed was unaccounted for. The leaders were richer by a few crores overnight.
(To be continued)
(Reported by Jiji Paul, Anil Kurudath, Jayachandran Ilankath, R Krishna Raj, V R Prathap, Mintu P Jacob, A S Ullas and T B Lal)
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