Benny Thomas has resigned as the additional private secretary of Electricity, Environment and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sunny Joseph on Sunday. His resignation has reportedly been handed over to Chief Minister V D Satheesan.

The appointment was questioned because Benny Thomas was the minister's brother-in-law. The first major controversy that had the potential to distract attention away from the V D Satheesan government's new policy moves has thus been taken out of the way.

It was only the day before that Sunny Joseph had stoutly defended the appointment. "No professional qualifications have been legally stipulated for the minister's personal staff. The only precondition is that more than half the minister's personal staff should be on deputation from the state government," Sunny Joseph said. 

He also subtly made the point that the favouritism charges during the period of the first Pinarayi Vijayan Ministry, against E P Jayarajan and K T Jaleel, were of a different nature. The allegation against the LDF ministers was that they had appointed close relatives to top PSU posts. 

"This is not an appointment made from an official rank list drawn up after conducting a test and interview. Here it is for the concerned minister to pick a candidate who can best help discharge his duties. I myself had said that this person is my relative. But being my relative was not the factor. If that was so I could have appointed my lawyer brother," Sunny Joseph said.

He said he chose Benny Thomas because he had full faith in the person's ability. Benny Thomas was also his chief election agent in the last Assembly elections. "This is a man with excellent character, a great track record in politics and is a talented and highly acceptable personality whom I also trust," the minister said.

There was not much criticism from within the Congress party, either. Senior Congress leader and health minister K Muraleedharan had openly defended the appointment. "Even though he is Sunny Joseph's relative, he is a person with political experience," Muraleedharan said. Thomas was panchayat president of Ulikkal Panchayat in Kannur twice. Also, he was active in Congress before he married Sunny Joseph's sister. 

The health minister even took a dig at the opposition. "When Mohammed Riyas was made a minister, did we say that the son-in-law had been made a minister in the father-in-law's cabinet," he said.

Fact is, the opposition, too, did not seem particularly bothered by the appointment. When the CPM moved an adjournment motion in the Assembly on June 3 on what it called the vindictive mass transfers of government employees, the appointment of Benny Thomas did not figure in the top list of the CPM's grievances, though V Joy, the CPM MLA who moved the motion, mentioned it. Sunny Joseph had ignored the mention. Even then, opposition leader Pinarayi Vijayan did not even make a passing reference to the appointment in his walk out speech.

According to top Congress sources, Chief Minister V D Satheesan was adamant that such controversies, even if of a non-serious nature, should not be allowed to mask the government's performance.

In public, the CM was cautious around the issue. When reporters asked him, he was unwilling to engage. "It has come to our notice. We will examine the issue and let you know," he said curtly.

Nonetheless, it is said that even the CM had acknowledged that the issue did not carry the kind of ethical burden that was evident in the case of the LDF ministers. "Satheesan had said in close party circles that there was nothing wrong with the appointment but he does not want the controversy to take the attention away from the policy shifts that he was introducing," a Congress leader said.