Kannur: The decision of Electricity Minister and KPCC president Sunny Joseph to appoint his brother-in-law, Benny Thomas, as his Additional Private Secretary has reignited the nepotism debate in Kerala and on social media, a charge that the previous LDF government grappled with repeatedly during its decade in power.

In social media, critics have drawn parallels with former CPM minister E P Jayarajan, who was forced to resign in October 2016, barely four months into the first Pinarayi Vijayan government, after appointing relatives to senior positions in state-run enterprises. His nephew, P K Sudheer Nambiar, was appointed managing director of a public sector undertaking, a move that sparked a political storm and eventually cost Jayarajan his ministerial post.

K T Jaleel also had to resign as minister in 2021 after the Lokayukta found him guilty of nepotism and abuse of power in the appointment of a relative to the Kerala State Minorities Development Finance Corporation.

After Benny Thomas's appointment became public, CPM supporters pulled out the old bites and speeches of UDF leaders criticising former Industries Minister Jayarajan and Higher Education and Minority Welfare Minister Jaleel.

In one bite, the then Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said: "The CPM has safely accommodated all its relatives within four months. But nepotism was not an internal party matter but a public issue." He had contrasted the CPM's actions with those of former Industries Minister P K Kunhalikutty, saying the Muslim League leader had not appointed relatives to his personal staff. "All such appointments should be cancelled. Nepotism is corruption," Chennithala had declared. Those remarks are now being widely circulated on social media by CPM supporters, who accuse the Congress of applying different standards when in power.

The Congress, however, insisted that Benny Thomas's appointment cannot be equated with the appointments that brought down Jayarajan or Jaleel. Benny Thomas is a secretary of the Kannur District Congress Committee. He was a former president of Ulikkal grama panchayat and a former Congress mandalam president. According to the minister's office, it is his decades-long political and organisational background -- not his relationship with Sunny Joseph -- that earned him the position. Benny Thomas is the husband of Sunny Joseph's sister.

The defence has found an unexpected champion in Sahitya Akademi award-winning writer from Iritty, Vinoy Thomas.

In a widely read Facebook post, Vinoy argued that reducing Benny Thomas to merely "Sunny Joseph's brother-in-law" ignores a lifetime of grassroots political work. Recalling his own youth, Vinoy narrated how, after failing his pre-degree course and completing a mechanic's training programme, he struggled to find employment. It was Benny Thomas, then a young local political activist, who personally accompanied him to a motor workshop owner and persuaded the reluctant employer to give him a chance. The intervention secured Vinoy his first job at a weekly wage of Rs 25. "There are hundreds of such stories in our village," Vinoy wrote, describing Benny Thomas as someone people routinely approached when they needed help.

The writer said Benny Thomas was the moral core of his Sahitya Akademi-winning novel 'Anthill' (Puttu). According to Vinoy, the positive qualities of the novel's protagonist, Jeremias, were inspired by Benny Thomas's sense of justice and his ability to resolve complex local disputes.

Vinoy also recalled working alongside Benny Thomas when he became the first president of Ulikkal Panchayat. Those years, he said, demonstrated how an effective local self-government institution could transform an entire region. The experiences were so rich, he wrote, that they could form the basis of another novel.

The larger question confronting Congress is not whether Benny Thomas possesses political credentials. The challenge is whether a party that once made nepotism a major political issue can afford to ignore the optics of appointing a close relative of a minister to a key position in his personal staff. Particularly, when its ally, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), has drawn up a list of candidates from which its ministers can pick their personal staff to avoid such controversies.