Thiruvananthapuram: A compromise formula has been thrashed out at the second minister-level meeting conducted to end the 56-day-long strike of the opposition Congress and BJP councillors demanding the resignation of Thiruvananthapuram mayor Arya Rajendran.
CPM councillor D R Anil, who had admitted that he had written a letter to the CPM district secretary though he did not send it, will relinquish his position as the chairman of the Corporation's Public Works Standing Committee. The Mayor will continue in office.
Top sources said the Congress and BJP councillors had accepted the decision and agreed to withdraw the strike nearing two months. The compromise talks were led by local self-government minister M B Rajesh and general education minister V Sivankutty, a former mayor himself and one of the senior leaders in the district.
The first minister-level talks convened by M B Rajesh on December 5 could not arrive at a consensus formula. The Congress and BJP councillors had stuck to their demand that Arya Rajendran should step down.
Sensing that the Congress and BJP councillors would scale up the agitations if there were no concessions, the CPM district committee was desperate for a solution. There was a feeling that the agitation had brought local governance to a virtual standstill in the urban areas of Thiruvananthapuram. The CPM district committee's assessment was that a protracted agitation would offer the BJP, its main rival in urban Thiruvananthapuram, a huge political advantage.
Nonetheless, the party ruled out a complete surrender. Both Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and CPM state secretary M V Govindan had made it clear that Arya should stay on as mayor, come what may.
Sacrificing Arya, Thiruvananthapuram's youngest mayor ever, would have been a political embarrassment for the CPM. She was held up, even nationally, as the symbol of the CPM's commitment to women's rights.
The only option left was to sacrifice D R Anil. In fact, the opposition wanted Anil to resign his councillor post. The party has ruled this out. He will be asked to step down only from the standing committee chairman post.
At the minister-level meeting held today, a source said the CPM stand that the mayor's fate should be left to the court to decide was accepted, even if grudgingly, by both the Congress and BJP councillors. The High Court is about to hear the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation nepotism row involving the mayor in the first half of January next year.
Arya was also officially absolved of any wrongdoing. A Crime Branch probe into the letter controversy had concluded that the letter was created to defame the mayor and to unsettle the functioning of the Corporation.
The Crime Branch FIR said that the mayor was in Delhi from October 30 to November 4 to participate in the party programme. The controversial letter was sent on November 1 by tampering with the mayor's official letterhead, the FIR said.
In fact, Anil had offered himself as the perfect sacrificial lamb. Unlike Arya, Anil had admitted that he had indeed drafted a letter to "Comrade" Anavur Nagappan asking him to send a list of candidates to fill up the vacancies at the SAT Hospital in Thiruvananthapuram. Even while admitting that he had indeed drafted such a letter, Anil had also claimed that he had not sent it to his district secretary.
Like the purported letter written by Arya, Anil's too had gone viral on social media. But unlike Anil, Arya had categorically denied having written such a letter. The letter allegedly written by the mayor had sought from the CPM district secretary names of party members/supporters to fill the 295 temporary openings in the Corporation, right from doctor and staff nurse to part-time sweeper.
