A day after a former editorial member of CPI-M mouthpiece ‘Deshabhimani’ made serious allegations against an unnamed party top leader, senior Congress leader and Opposition Leader in the Kerala Assembly VD Satheesan said the top leader referred to by the journalist is Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
VD Satheesan on Tuesday asked Chief Minister Vijayan to relinquish the Home portfolio he now holds and launch an inquiry into the allegations made by G Sakthidharan, former editorial board member of ‘Deshabhimani’ daily.
“When a probe has been initiated against KPCC president Sudhakaran based on the statement of his former driver, is it right to evade the revelations of a person who claims who had helped (Pinarayi Vijayan) count the money he received,” Satheesan told media persons in New Delhi.
“We want to know if the CM is ready to order a probe into the allegations levelled by Sakthidharan and step aside as Home Minister,” Satheeesan asked.
In a Facebook post on Monday, Sakthidharan, former editorial member of CPI-M mouthpiece ‘Deshabhimani,’ said a prominent CPI-M leader had collected over Rs 2 crore from several ‘big shots’ and took the amount to Thiruvananthapuram.
Giving clear hints about the identity of the leader, Sakthidharan wrote “he is very popular from Trivandrum to Time Square.” Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had recently attended a meeting of Keralites at Times Square, New York.
“Once I helped him count huge amounts of currency gifted by several big shots. It happened at my erstwhile office at Kaloor in Cochin for two consecutive days, where he stayed…. I remember the amount counted when I was still there. It was two crore thirty-five thousand.In the meantime, I along with my colleague, who was the elder son of the brother of a legendary leader, rushed to buy two large reed mats for packing the currency. The amount was kept in the dicky of an Innova car that rode to Trivandrum late at night. … What happened to the money? It simply went to darkness,” Sakthidharan wrote on his Facebook page.
Satheesan also demanded a detailed inquiry into the serious allegations levelled against CM Pinarayi Vijayan by Bangalore- based senior journalist Sandhya Ravishankar. Sandhya had earlier claimed that Pinarayi had amassed over Rs 1,500 acre of land in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.