Two gone, who’s next in Kerala gold smuggling case?

As the four-year-old Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala was winning applause in the management of COVID-19, out of the blue came a gold smuggling case and a week later, two top officials in the Chief Minister’s Office were booted out. The million dollar question now is who will be the next to fall?

The gold smuggling case which has large scale ramifications first surfaced when P. S.Sarith, a former employee of the UAE Consulate, here was arrested by the Customs on July 5. He was facilitating the smuggling of 30 kg gold in diplomatic baggage to Thiruvananthapuram from Dubai.

It turned murkier when the name of Swapna Suresh, a former employee of the UAE Consulate here and now employed with the state IT Department, surfaced. The case turned full circle when their links with the second most powerful person in Vijayan’s office — his principal secretary M. Sivasankar, got revealed.

After dilly dallying, despite the Congress and the BJP up in arms demanding Vijayan to suspend Sivasankar, on Thursday the Chief Minister finally did it.

Also to fall was his IT man — Arun Balachandran – a popular face in all the IT related events in the state.

Both of them were booted out by Vijayan, after several visuals and telephone call records surfaced which showed that Swapna was in frequent touch with the two.

Now on the radar of suspicion is State Minister of Higher Education K. T.Jaleel. He has on record said that he interacted with Swapna with regards to accepting sponsorship from the UAE Consulate worth Rs five lakh for the distribution of Ramzan kits in the Malappuram district, from where he hails.

According to the code of conduct for State Ministers, they cannot accept gifts which are valued more than Rs 5,000. Besides, rules are very clear that all such things should be routed only through the Ministry of External Affairs and not directly to either the state or Union Ministers.

Kerala Assembly speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan is also facing the heat as he himself has gone on record stating that he knew Swapna for a while now.

What has landed him in trouble is that last year he had inaugurated a business venture of Sandip, here, who has been arrested by the NIA.

At the inauguration function, visuals have come out where he is seen patting the shoulder of Swapna.

“I knew her as a functionary of the UAE Consulate, as she was a key personnel in dealing with officials and others in the state government for them,” said Sreeramakrishnan.

With both the Congress and the BJP demanding Vijayan to quit over the way he has been managing affairs in his office and by now two of his close aides have been removed, it remains to be seen as to how Vijayan will manage in the coming days.

Already the Congress led opposition on Thursday served a notice to remove Sreeramakrishnan from the Speaker’s post. The State Assembly is to meet on July 27 to pass the Finance Bill.

But, as per the rules, this notice requires a period of 14 days. Hence, it remains to be seen if it will be taken up during the session.

Meanwhile, Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala has announced they will move a no confidence motion against the Vijayan government.

CPI-M state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan wrote in the party organ, which came out on Friday, that Kerala has a history when a Chief Minister (K. Karunakaran) had to resign over the ISRO Spy case in 1995.

“The opposition and a section of the media is busy weaving out baseless stories in the gold smuggling case, but they will not be able to dislodge the present government. The colour of ‘gold’ here is not ‘red’ but it is ‘green’ and ‘saffron’. The opposition is trying to rake up this issue as the main election campaign, but it won’t be of any help. The CPI-M and the Left front is strongly behind the Vijayan government,” said Balakrishnan.