Amidst the UDF's deafening silence on the damning findings on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's daughter by the Income Tax Interim Settlement Board, Congress MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan attempted to drop a feeler in the Assembly on Thursday at the most unexpected moment.
The fag end of the day on the last day of the session, when senior UDF leaders, including Opposition Leader V D Satheesan, were absent.
Kuzhalnadan was speaking during a discussion on the Kerala Government Land Assignment (Amendment) Bill, and as a ploy to ease into his subject, said that the Bill should not offer any quarter for corruption and that these days corruption was carried out in unique ways.
But before he could make his point, the ruling party members shouted him down and Speaker A N Shamseer quickly blocked Kuzhalnadan's speech and expunged whatever remarks he managed to make. The few UDF members who remained, a mere handful of them, then staged a walk out in protest.
However, Kuzhalnadan came out of the Assembly along with senior Congress MLA Sunny Joseph and RMP's K K Rema and told the media all that he wanted to say inside the House.
He wanted to read out an excerpt from the findings of the Settlement Board. He did this outside the Assembly gates. "The detailed findings arrived at by the (Income Tax) Department based on various solid statements of persons connected with the affairs of the company (Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited), we hold that Exalogic has not provided any services as per the evidence gathered during the search. The Department has demonstrated with clinching evidence the fact that the applicant (CMRL) had made payments through banking channels to persons connected with a prominent person and thereby claim it as a deductible expense and by claiming to compensate the services that has not been rendered or received. Therefore, the payment of Rs 1.72 crore does not qualify as business expenditure and accordingly stands disallowed."
The findings of the IT Settlement Board was first reported by Malayala Manorama in its August 9 edition. The Manorama report had said that Veena Vijayan and her company Exalogic Solutions received Rs 5 lakh and Rs 3 lakh a month respectively for three years from 2017, a total of Rs 1.72 crore. The report said that Exalogic had signed an agreement with CMRL to provide marketing consultancy and software services. However, the Income Tax investigation revealed that no such services were rendered but still the monthly payments were made without fail.
Kuzhalnadan also read out a sentence from the findings that said that Exalogic was owned by "the daughter of a prominent politician holding the reins of the government in Kerala."
"When an appellate body has found that such a company is run by the daughter of a prominent politician, how is it against rules to raise it in the Assembly. It is a shocking finding the people of Kerala should be aware of," Kuzhalnadan said. "The ruling benches started obstructing my speech even before I could say anything incriminating. When they realised that I had the Chief Minister in my sights, and that the Chief Minister would be hurt, they tried to smother my democratic right to speak. They clearly feared something," he said.
However, Kuzhalnadan had to respond to the obvious counter question. "Were you also planning to mention the names of the UDF leaders mentioned in the report," he was asked.
"I would have if I was allowed to speak," he shot back. "The ministers were there, they could have asked me. I had come prepared for the question and had no intention of masking that part of the report," he said.
Kuzhalnadan conceded that top UDF names (Oommen Chandy, Ramesh Chennithala, P K Kunhalikutty) were mentioned. "But nowhere in the order has it been said they were paid money," he said.
Kuzhalnadan also said he had not sought permission from UDF leaders to raise the issue in the Assembly. "I had every right to raise the issue. After all, it is a finding by a statutory body, not an allegation," he said.
