Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan yesterday got a reprieve in the Rs3.74bn SNC-Lavalin contract scam that had haunted him for two decades.
The Kerala High Court upheld a 2013 lower court’s verdict acquitting Vijayan, who concluded the deal with the Canadian engineering and construction major.
The court also criticised the Central Bureau of Investigation for hounding Vijayan as there were other ministers also who had dealt with SNC Lavalin company.
The CBI said it would challenge the ruling in the Supreme Court.
The agency has accused Vijayan of causing massive losses to the exchequer by awarding a hydroelectric power project renovation contract to the multinational company disregarding better options at home when he was the state’s power minister.
The high court however said three retired officials of the Kerala State Electricity Board – K G Rajasekharan, R Sivadas and Kasturi Ranga - should stand trial in the case, billed as the state’s biggest corruption scandal that auditors concluded made the state poorer by Rs3.74bn.
The CBI says Vijayan, who was the electricity minister from May 1996 to October 1998 before taking up the reins of his party as its powerful secretary, hatched a criminal conspiracy to award the contract.
The Canadian firm bagged the contract for the renovation and modernisation of the Pallivasal, Sengulam, and Panniar hydroelectric projects at an exorbitant price, without a competitive bidding process.
“It’s only proved our point. The CPM has always maintained that it’s a politically motivated case and we’ll fight it legally and politically,” the Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said.
“We are glad that finally it’s been legally established that there’s no evidence proving their charges and it vindicates our stand. We fought it, and we have won.”
Training his gun at the investigating agency, an elated Vijayan, whose power would have been in the balance if the judgment had gone against him, said the CBI has often been described as a caged parrot and its political masters (the federal government) were using it to target his party through him.
Vijayan also said he feels sad as his long-time counsel M K Damodaran passed away recently.
“In this long journey of fighting this case, the truth has triumphed all the time...Today even the high court said that this was a political witch-hunt. Now that I am cleared, this is going to give me renewed vigour to take the state forward in all aspects of development,” added Vijayan.
Dealing a body blow to the agency and rejecting its argument that there was sufficient evidence to prove the charges against Vijayan, Justice P Ubaid observed that the “CBI wrongly picked and chose Pinarayi Vijayan without any material in the case.”
The judge said it was not fair that only Vijayan was being singled out though some other ministers had also handled the power portfolio.
Vijayan was arraigned by the CBI as the seventh accused in the case, leading to political furore.
On November 5, 2013, the CBI court in the state capital exonerated all the accused, without taking the case for trial.
However a year later, the CBI filed a revision petition against the CBI court’s exoneration.
The case then went into a limbo with a few judges deciding not to hear the case. But in 2016, the trial started and Vijayan brought in high-profile lawyer Harish Salve to defend him.
Vijayan was forced to seek the service of Salve after the CBI brought in former Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai as a witness in the case.
The trial in the case got over in March this year and Ubaid posted the case for delivering the judgment.
Reacting to the judgment, state CPM secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the case was a political one.
“In 2006, it was the then Congress-led UDF government which transferred the case to the CBI. This decision was taken after the State Vigilance Department gave a clean chit to Vijayan. The CBI was used as a tool to target political rivals after the CPM withdrew its support to the first UPA government.”
He termed the judgment as a “huge setback for the CBI as it tried to target a political leader”. Balakrishnan said that it has been proved again that CPM is a party which does not indulge in corruption.
However, opposition Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala said the Lavalin case which was buried appears to have reopened once again through yesterday’s judgment.


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