Thiruvananthapuram: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is all set to chargesheet CPI-M State Secretary Pinarayi Vijayan in the multi-crore SNC Lavlin case. This comes at a very wrong time for the CPM in Kerala as the party is going into election mode.
CPM leaders say this is an act of revenge while it is a charge which the Congress denies.
AICC Spokesperson Manish Tiwari said, “To start attributing motives to agencies even before things come to the court is not done. After all CBI is a professional agency.”
In 1997 when Vijayan was the power minister, the Kerala government entered into a contract with the Canadian company SNC Lavlin to renovate and modernise three hydro electric projects.
Later a CAG report showed that the Rs 375-crore project money was wasted as the company did not complete it.
The government also had a sub-deal with the company to mobilise Rs 98 crore for a cancer hospital controlled by the party but of this only Rs 9 crore came.
“Eventually if this results in conviction then at that stage the CPM will have egg on its face. Then it will not be easy for the party to convince the general public that it has been victimsed for political reasons,” political analyst BRP Bhaskar said.
If the CBI chargesheets him, it will be Pinarayi Vijayan's political waterloo. For now the party in Kerala is strongly behind him, something that could just change the moment the CBI comes out with some credible evidence in the court.
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