The Pinarayi Vijayan government of Kerala is no stranger to controversies and it seems like the cauldron of its hullabaloos has filled upto the brim as opposition leaders are gearing up for routing the state government from power. The opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) on Monday moved a no-confidence motion against the Vijayan-led Left government, raising a slew of allegations including the gold smuggling case.
Congress legislator V D Satheeshan moved the motion, saying the Chief Minister’s office was “hijacked” by the gold smuggling gang.
“While the Chief Minister was attending the press conference and saying that everything was fine with the government and was ready to face any probe, his former principal secretary was being questioned by investigating agencies for hours,” said Satheeshan.
The Kerala Gold scam had unearthed the skeletons allegedly hidden deep inside the Pinarayi Vijayan-government and it is expected to give it a grand gold political burial. It is interesting to note that a no-confidence motion is being brought against an incumbent government for the first time after 15 years. It was in 2005, that the then minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan had last moved a motion alleging corruption against the Oommen Chandy government.
The gold smuggling racket was reported in the first week of July when the Customs officials seized 30 kilograms of gold, valued at Rs. 15 crores at the Thiruvananthapuram airport from a diplomatic cargo addressed to a person at the UAE Consulate-General.
At the centre of the gold smuggling racket were former PRO at the UAE Consulate General Sarith Kumar and Swapna Suresha, an ex-UAE consulate officer who was later serving as a liaisoning officer for one of the firms linked to Kerala government’s IT Department. She was appointed for six months on a contractual basis.
As per Customs, Sarith Kumar is no longer associated with the Consulate but he took advantage of the privileges and immunity enjoyed by diplomatic missions. However, the smuggling bid was foiled and Sarith who had reached the airport to collect the cargo was apprehended.
The gold smuggling racket and the allegations of a nexus between Sivasankar and former UAE Consulate employees Sarith and Swapna Suresh has thus kicked a political storm in Kerala. Facing the storm is Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan. Sivasankar was a part of Vijayan’s office right from his initial days as the Kerala CM.
The Gold smuggling racket was an elaborate ploy to finance terrorism in the country and that the money from the scam was being used to finance terror operations in the country and the Malayali film industry.
According to the NIA’s remand note, Swapna and Sandeep had conspired together to create monetary instability and destabilize the Indian economy by smuggling large quantities of gold from UAE.
The last two years for the Pinarayi Vijayan government have been torrential. First, the Kerala floods showed the reality of the grossly exaggerated ‘Kerala Model’ of development and then came the Sabarimala issue that metamorphosed into a much bigger problem due to the insipid stance of the state government. The Gold smuggling case might very well be the final nail in the coffin for Vijayan and his left government, that has faltered in the face of adversity, time and again.