M V Govindan lays down CPM's revival plan: Protect Pinarayi and family at any cost

Thiruvananthapuram: CPM state secretary M V Govindan's first press conference after the Extended State Committee revealed the party's master plan to get back into the reckoning: Protect Pinarayi Vijayan and family at any cost. He said the party would soon launch a mass agitation against the ED action.

The state secretary on Friday dismissed as "fabricated" all allegations against Pinarayi and his family members. "The Central agencies themselves have fallen completely silent about the initial charge that Veena (Vijayan) had received monthly payments from CMRL (Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited). It is no more to be heard," Govindan said after the first meeting of the revamped CPM State Secretariat.

He said the Enforcement Directorate came up with a "new fiction" because the amount involved in the first charge was too little to carry any weight. "Since Rs 3 crore is negligible, they decided to look serious by cooking up a new story involving Rs 10-20 crore. The ED manufactured the statement (attributed to Veena)," he said, and added: "It is their screenplay."

Earlier, ridiculing the 25-page note the ED had submitted to the State Police Chief and in which 'hawala' transactions were alleged, CPM State Secretariat member and former minister Mohammad Riyas had called it an "award-winning script".

Govindan said the ED's target was not Pinarayi but the party. "The BJP wants Kerala within its grasp, and for this they are trying to weaken the Left forces, particularly the CPM," Govindan said

He gave two examples of how the ED was inventing a false case against Pinarayi's family. One, he said, Veena was not once asked about any 'hawala' transaction. The other was the ED's attempt to connect a constituency-level WhatsApp group to hawala deals. "It was a group formed by the MLA (Riyas) to discuss issues in the constituency. When the chats were released, forget 'hawala'; there were no traces of even a 'ha'," he said.

Govindan also used the retractions of CMRL MD Sasidharan Kartha and senior officers to further bolster his case of an ED conspiracy against the party. The other day, an affidavit filed by Kartha's brother Ajith Kartha before the ED director in 2024 was released to the press.

It said that Sasidharan Kartha was interrogated by the ED for hours even after doctors testified that he was suffering from multiple medical conditions like Parkinson's, dementia and cardiac issues. It was also said that his thumb impression was forcibly applied. CMRL chief finance officer K Suresh Kumar and chief general manager G Suresh Kumar also said that their statements that Veena had not provided any services were given under duress.

The problem is, Govindan kept contradicting himself during his media interaction. He had termed the existence of a 'red book' as "an absolute falsehood", but when asked about Riyas's defence that the figures in Veena's pages were connected to a future business plan, this is what the CPM state secretary said. "I only meant that it was not a 'hawala' transaction."

This is as clear a hint as any that Govindan believed that the ED did indeed confiscate, if not a 'red book', at least some pages in which Veena had scribbled finer details of financial transactions. If so, the pages that the ED submitted to the State Police Chief are unlikely to be fabricated, as he had claimed.

During the last stretch of the media interaction, it was clear that Govindan's argument was not that these records of financial transactions did not exist. It is just that they were not written by Riyas but by his wife Veena.

He said so when asked whether a CPM State Secretariat member like Riyas could plan a foreign business venture and organise international fund transfers in pursuit of this. "When Riyas spoke of a future business plan jotted on paper, he was referring not to him but to his wife," Govindan said. This meant two things: that Riyas believed in the existence of these jottings and the party, too, is convinced.

But soon after, he went back to saying that the party fully trusted Riyas's explanation in the Extended State Committee that all the ED allegations were completely wrong. He oscillated between two extremes: from dismissing the existence of diary jottings to believing that these writings are real, and back. A clear indication of infirm political positioning.

Before he oscillated back to his first claim that the ED evidence was all made up, Govindan had subtly separated State Secretariat member Riyas from his apparently apolitical but enterprising wife Veena.

When his swing was poised at the end where he trusted the presence of the diary, Govindan had said that the scribblings were Veena's and not Riyas's. This prompted him to remark: "If someone wants to start a new business or venture, why should the party bother to stand in the way."

Meaning, it's her choice and not the party's if Veena wants to start a business. He also wanted to know what was wrong with the party taking such a stand.

Isn't there a moral issue involved, he was asked. Govindan's reply: "What is unethical in thinking of starting a new business. How can just imagining about a future venture be called 'hawala'?"

The question was then put differently to him. "Shouldn't people close to power be cautious while entering into certain business deals?" The reference was to the Chief Minister's daughter's firm securing a service contract with a company in which the government has a stake (KSIDC has a 13 per cent stake in CMRL).

Govindan offered a reply in which two claims made by him clashed dangerously with each other. He said that the entire Exalogic-CMRL allegation had by now "vanished" when he himself had earlier said that Veena had received money through legal means, by paying taxes. "Is the ED saying a word about that issue now," he said, and then strayed far away from the topic.

To get him back to the issue, the state secretary was asked whether the CMRL-Exalogic issue was discussed at the Extended State Committee and whether any accountability was fixed. "There is absolutely no basis to those charges," he said, and added: "Why should the party take any moral responsibility (for something fictitious)."

Govindan then indulged in a bit of whataboutery, by deflecting the charges onto UDF leaders. "There are two ministers in the UDF Cabinet who had collected money from this company, and there are no records of these transactions. But Veena received the money by paying taxes," Govindan said.

The question was not about Veena paying taxes. It was about the ethics of a Chief Minister's daughter working with a company that had innumerable environmental violations slapped on it.

A poser on the party's role in keeping a close tab on the materialistic pursuits of its party members was also hurled at the state secretary. Shouldn't the party be aware of the business plans of a family in which there is a Politburo member who was also a Chief Minister and a State Secretariat member who was a minister?

"This business proposal has not come before the party. Are some scribblings on paper enough to create a project? There is a long way to go before a project materialises. The party needs to discuss it only when the project reaches an advanced stage of planning," he said.

This is a clear indication of the party abdicating its supervisory role. No wonder the State Committee, in its review of 2026, had this to say: "The fact that some individuals adopt an affluent lifestyle, beyond living beyond their income, has also created disrepute among the people."