Vijayan orders Vigilance probe against Leader of Opposition

Kochi: Hours before Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan left for a visit to the US and Cuba, he gave the green signal to the Vigilance and Anti Corruption Bureau for a preliminary probe against Leader of Opposition V.D. Satheesan, based on a complaint that he collected money from abroad soon after the 2018 floods to build homes for the poor in his constituency.

In response, Satheesan’s office said he has reacted to this a few times in the past and he will again do it on Saturday.

The Congress leader had recently hit out at the CPI-M’s party organ “Deshabhimani”, which he termed a “yellow paper” for coming out with baseless reports on especially about a non-existent allegation that has been cleared a few times before.

He had said that first the allegation (collecting money from abroad for building homes after the 2018 floods) was cleared by Vijayan’s Vigilance department, then the single and division bench of the Kerala High Court cleared it and if that was not enough, a probe by the Speaker just before the 2021 Assembly polls also cleared him.