Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will return to Kerala from his long official foreign trip on October 15. Of all the questions he will face on his return, there will be one that he would find the most difficult to answer. “Why did he take his daughter and grandson along?”
As per the code of conduct issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs in 1992, only three kinds of people will be considered as a chief minister’s family during official visits in India and outside. One, his legally wedded partner, in this case wife. Two, minor children (kids below 18). Three, any blood relative, on the Chief Minister's or his partner's side, who is solely dependant on the Chief Minister.
So, if the code of conduct is adhered to, the Chief Minister's daughter, an independent woman who runs her own business, and her son, who is not dependant on the Chief Minister, cannot be considered 'family' for official foreign trips.
Unfair advantage
The justification is that the expenses of the Chief Minister's daughter and grandson are not borne by the state. “Their expenses are met from their own pocket,” a top source in the government told Onmanorama. CPM sources, too, put forward this defence.
At this point, the moral argument kicks in. “Even if we assume this is true, there are still the special privileges the daughter and the grandson receive by being part of the official delegation. Right from booking tickets to their accommodation, everything would have been done using the state government apparatus,” said Dr Jayapal Raghavan, a non-resident Malayali who was invited but could not make it to the regional conference of the Loka Kerala Sabha in London on October 9.
There are bigger privileges than comfortable stay and travel. “These family members will have easy access to top businessmen in the countries the Chief Minister is visiting. For someone like Pinarayi Vijayan's daughter Veena, who herself is a businesswoman, this could at least theoretically open up a lot of networking opportunities. Seen from this angle, Veena is securing an unfair advantage by being part of the Chief Minister's entourage,” Raghavan said.
Self-funding or crowd sourcing?
According to Joseph C Mathew, an IT professional and former Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan's close aide, the very justification that the family members are paying from their own pocket is far more problematic than letting the state exchequer meet their expenses.
“There is every chance that these family members were sponsored by some moneybags close to the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister himself has said that the regional conference of the Loka Kerala Sabha was funded by non-resident Malayalis. So it is possible that the tab of the stay and other expenses of the Chief Minister's family were picked by these rich buisnessmen,” Mathew said.
“If this is so, we have to bear in mind that these rich men do not spend for nothing. What they have spent to conduct the regional conference and to make the Chief Minister's and his family's stay and travel in Europe cosy and comfortable, they would claim back in various forms, in the form of encroached paddy fields, wetlands and rivers. Let us not forget that there are no free lunches,” he said.
Therefore, Mathew said the government should come clean on the activities of the Chief Minister's family members -- their stay, travel and leisure outings -- in Europe. “It should set out in detail the expenses of the family members and how these were met,” he said.
Left in the dumps
There is also a feeling, even within the party, that the Chief Minister's whimsical ways run counter to the image the Left wants to project for itself. “In 2006, the party had raised serious objections when Arun Kumar was present during his father's (then Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan) meeting with Infosys chief Kris Gopalakrishnan,” a CPM insider said.
Joseph Mathew said when former Chief Justice H L Duttu took Achuthanandan in a chartered flight to his daughter's wedding, the CPM had appointed a commission under P Karunakaran to report whether Achuthanandan's actions strayed from the austere conditions the party has set for its leaders.
“I think the Chief Minister should have been extra careful especially when his family is haunted by the serious allegation that his wife had used her special status to coax a favourable business deal for her daughter from the visiting Sharjah ruler,” Mathew said. “It seems like the Chief Minister is throwing all caution to the winds. It is as if he doesn't care,” he said.
Social commentator and Left thinker N M Pearson said it was pathetic to witness CPM spokespersons justify the Chief Minister's actions by indulging in whataboutery. “Their only defence is that the UDF ministers had done this before. This is pitiable. The party has no obligation to defend a Chief Minister who does things unmindful of the ideals that created his party in the first place,” Pearson said.
