ED targeting Veena not innocent or apolitical, argues Pinarayi; hints at arrest risk at CPM Kannur meet

Kannur: CPM Politburo member and Leader of the Opposition Pinarayi Vijayan made an emotional, two-hour intervention at the party’s extended district committee meeting in Kannur, urging delegates not to assume that the targeting of his daughter T Veena in the CMRL-Exalogic case was politically innocent.

According to sources, the closed-door meeting, which concluded on October 19, saw delegates question why the party was deploying its organisational resources and leaders to defend Veena in the case being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate.

Vijayan’s intervention came after delegates questioned why the party was taking a different position on the case against Veena from its earlier stand on cases involving the children of former state secretaries Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and V S Achuthanandan. Manorama News reported on October 20 that delegates from Panoor, Sreekandapuram and Madayi had raised the questions.

The criticism, sources told Onmanorama, was framed as a question of party policy rather than a personal attack on Vijayan. “The party’s position until now has been that when allegations or attacks are directed at the families of party leaders, those leaders and their families should defend themselves. We need to clarify whether the party has changed that position,” a delegate reportedly said.

Kannur district secretary K K Ragesh and state secretary M V Govindan initially responded to the concerns. Vijayan, however, said he wanted to clarify certain points, prolonging the meeting until around 7 pm, a party source said. “He could not let the questions go unanswered because they were raised by his own comrades in his home district,” the source said.

Another party source described those who raised the issue as "honest delegates" with allegiance to the late V S Achuthanandan.

In his response, Vijayan reportedly invoked the cases against Aam Aadmi Party leaders Manish Sisodia and Arvind Kejriwal, arguing that a similar atmosphere was being created in Kerala. A Delhi court discharged Sisodia, Kejriwal and 21 others in the Central Bureau of Investigation’s excise policy case in February 2026, ruling that the prosecution had failed to establish a case warranting trial. The CBI has challenged the order. Sisodia spent about 17 months in prison, while Kejriwal spent 156 days in custody. Both were arrested while serving as Delhi’s deputy chief minister and chief minister respectively.

​Sisodia, who attended two CPM events in Kerala last week, spoke about the alleged misuse of central agencies.

In the meeting, Vijayan reportedly suggested that he, too, could face arrest, drawing a parallel with the AAP leaders’ experience. "It was in this context that he cautioned against viewing the allegations against his daughter as politically innocuous," a source said.

Vijayan may have reserved his most detailed response for the final meeting in the extended district-level series. The meetings began in Alappuzha on September 26 and concluded in Kannur on October 19.

The Kannur meeting’s proceedings, which continued until around 7 pm, stood in contrast to the extended district committee meeting in neighbouring Kasaragod, which concluded by 3 pm. “Kasaragod, too, saw severe criticism of the leadership, but the replies were short,” a CPM leader in Kasaragod said.

Grassroots review
The district-level discussions are now feeding into a wider review of the party’s electoral setbacks. The next stage, party leaders said, will be a series of extended meetings at the area committee level, followed by extended local committee meetings.

Area committees have been asked to examine problems within their jurisdictions ahead of these discussions. Members will meet branch secretaries to identify why votes shifted, what went wrong and who was responsible.

In Trikaripur, where the party had not anticipated defeat, four to five area committee members have been assigned to examine the issues in each local committee. Their findings will be submitted to the area committee for discussion before the review proceeds further. “There is tremendous anxiety. The reports coming in from Payyannur and Trikaripur say the party at the grassroots has been devastated,” a source close to a Kannur district MLA said.