Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala has asked its anti-corruption wing to examine a set of bribery allegations against the country's Chief Election Commissioner, and to look at how an earlier investigation into the same episode was closed without a case. Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala's direction to the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau was confirmed on Wednesday, amid continuing opposition protests over the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.
The complaint is from Sajan, a former contractor in Kollam district. He has told the Vigilance Director that Gyanesh Kumar, who was Kerala's Public Works Department secretary in the mid-2000s, demanded Rs 2 crore to release payments for work already completed under the Kerala State Transport Project.
Sajan alleges that cheques for bills worth about Rs 17 crore, already approved by engineers, were withheld. The work was being done by a Malaysian consortium, PATI-BEL, and the delay, he claims, left its contractors and workers short of money. According to the complaint, the company's project engineer, Malaysian national Lee See Been, told him the cheques would not move without the payment.
"When I suggested that they pay something and settle the issue, they told me that the authorities of PATI-BEL were not permitting them to obtain the cheques by paying a bribe," Sajan has stated in the complaint.
He further claims that Lee used funds from another company project in Bengaluru to pay part of what was owed to contractors and workers, and that the withheld bills and the alleged demand contributed to Lee's suicide in 2006. Sajan also says Lee named Kumar in a suicide note, and that Lee's family in Malaysia later told company employees about it.
A Vigilance enquiry was opened after Lee's death in 2006 and later closed with the allegations not established. Sajan's complaint argues that the earlier probe never questioned him or others with direct knowledge of the alleged demand, and he has offered to produce Lee's family members and former colleagues as witnesses.
The fresh complaint will be examined by the Vigilance team already running a preliminary enquiry into the transport project, ordered by Chennithala on October 4 after a complaint from KPCC leader Malayinkeezhu Venugopal. That enquiry concerns the upgrading of MC Road, executed by the PATI-BEL consortium.
None of the allegations has been established. Kumar has not responded to them. The Bureau's immediate task is a preliminary enquiry, and a case would need the Home Department's sanction.