Prakash Karat, General Secretary of the CPM, has said Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy was another link in the chain of corrupt and non-accountable Congress heads of Government.
Chandy’s refusal to resign and be accountable in the solar scam was in keeping with the best traditions of the Congress-led Government at the Centre.
Inaugurating the indefinite siege at the State Secretariat here, being mounted by thousands of leftist volunteers demanding the resignation of the Chief Minister, Karat demanded that the Chief Minister step down immediately owning responsibility for the malfeasance committed under his nose, right within his office.
But he doubted if wiser counsel would prevail with Chandy given that practically nothing had happened after a series of scams and frauds exposed even at the Centre.
Solar energy was the latest in a series of incidences of fraud involving a crucial natural resource that the Congress-led regime seems to specialise in.
Karat referred to the fraud in spectrum allocation, natural gas and coal, among others, which the Centre was steeped in but had refused to be accountable.
He also referred to the fraud in the Railways in which former Minister Pavan Kumar Bansal despite protesting his innocence had to finally go.
A number of State and Union Ministers, and even the Prime Minister, have refused to be accountable for some of the worst corruption cases reported in recent times.
Meanwhile, the siege is progressing with leftist volunteers continuing to stream in to join the masses blocking three of the four gates of the Secretariat.
A tight vigil has been mounted in the capital city with around 5,000 members of the local police providing the first line of defence and an estimated 2,200 members of the paramilitary forces being kept on stand-by.
Chief Minister Chandy met Governor Nikhil Kumar a short while ago in what was described a routine call.
Emerging from the Raj Bhavan, he said a probe was on in seven cases related to the solar scam. Charge sheets would be presented in five of cases this week itself.
“Let us wait for police enquires to reach a logical conclusion. If they do not throw up satisfactory answers, we would not be found wanting with respect to corrective action,” the Chief Minister added.