Collateral Damage

 

 

What can a civil service officer close to the state Chief Minister expect when he is facing disciplinary action? A cakewalk, you would reckon. But if you are K. Suresh Kumar, IAS officer and trusted confidant of Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, the tables can turn.

Suresh Kumar was the leader of the special team that Achuthanandan had set up for the first phase of the unsuccessful Munnar Mission, which tried to drive out wealthy and politically connected encroachers from the hill station. Suresh Kumar is now under suspension for the last seven months after his public stand against the CM’s personal and political secretaries. Even though the CM signed an order to reinstate Suresh Kumar after accepting an inquiry report by Chief Secretary Neela Gangadharan, it is yet to be implemented. Reason: the CM’s party is against reinstating Suresh. The CPM had ordered the CM’s office to freeze the order until the party state secretariat took a decision on Suresh Kumar’s case.

Moreover, a move is afoot to frame Suresh Kumar in other cases related to alleged irregularities in the State Cooperative Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development. He was the Managing Director of the bank when the controversy regarding the CM’s office erupted.

Suresh Kumar is not the first or last victim of the CPM’s factional feud. Last week, C.R. Neelakandan, a social activist and environmentalist close to the CM’s camp, was transferred to the Hyderabad office of Keltron, a state government enterprise. Neelakandan was in the news recently for authoring a book on the reality of the Lavalin case in which the CPM state secretary, Pinarayi Vijayan. is one of the accused.

In another incident, a Kerala University professor who had compared Pinarayi with Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung in an article published in an English newspaper was denied promotion. The CPM state leadership is doing everything in its power to thwart Achuthanandan’s attempts to portray the state secretary and his cronies as corrupt. The party’s central leadership had recently ousted the CM from its politbureau, alleging the octogenarian leader had been violating party discipline.

The party state leadership’s targeting of Suresh Kumar proves that action against Achuthanandan has not been effective in putting out the fire of factionalism in the Kerala CPM. Opposition leader Oommen Chandy asserts that these incidents prove the allegations regarding lack of coordination in the state administration. Suresh Kumar was suspended from service on December 10, 2008, after he publicly, through television channels, said that it was the incompetence and inexperience of the CM’s private and political secretaries (K. Rajendran and K.N. Balagopal, both appointed by the party) that compelled Achuthanandan to seek outside counsel. Suresh Kumar was responding to the charge made by Balagopal and Rajendran in the CPM state committee that the CM was being misled by a caucus headed by Suresh Kumar. Suresh Kumar also held the two responsible for the alleged disappearance of files regarding the controversial Kiliroor sex scandal and the tardy progress of the Smart City project.

Earlier, Suresh Kumar had functioned as additional secretary to the CM’s personal secretary. Following this incident, Joseph Mathew, another Achuthanandan confidant who was functioning as his IT advisor, and government pleader Anil Kumar had to quit their jobs after the CPM put pressure on the CM.

According to party sources, the government will initiate some other action against Suresh Kumar once the Cabinet and party state secretariat meetings take a decision on the Chief Secretary’s report. Legal experts suggest it would be impossible to block Suresh Kumar from returning to service after the Chief Secretary had given him a clean chit. But the party’s tactics is to delay the reinstatement of Suresh Kumar and find another reason to take fresh action against him.

Joseph Mathew alleges that the party leadership’s campaign against Achuthanandan has affected the entire administration. “Take the case of the Smart City project. When I was the IT adviser, we used to respond to every mail we received from the Dubai-based promoters, TECOM. But last December onwards, TECOM officials are continuously complaining that they don’t receive any response to their queries and demands. The real reason behind this inaction is that everybody knows it is a priority project for the CM. Nobody wants to take any initiative and enter the bad books of party leadership,” says Joseph. Another case is of Andrews, a surveyor in Munnar, who was suspended during the Munnar Mission. After a court order, Andrews was reinstated but was transferred to Kasargod district. “If the case against Suresh Kumar is about criticising the government, many other bureaucrats who have done similar crimes are still in the good books of the government. For example, industries department principal secretary T. Balakrishnan had made statements in public against the land reforms policy. But the government had taken no action against him. When another bureaucrat signed the ADB loan agreement without the consent of the Cabinet, local administration department minister Paloli Mohammed Kutty publicly said no action should be taken against that official. So it’s clear that Suresh Kumar’s mistake was not official, but a political one,” says Joseph.

The infighting in the party has affected the administration to its core. Recently the CM had informed the Assembly that more than 1,25,000 files are pending in the secretariat. A CPM employees’ union leader says: “Actually the fight between the party leadership and the CM impacts the bureaucracy too. Many secretaries and senior officials have turned passive as they don’t want to face the ire of either the CM or the party leadership as it will be harmful for them. So they sit on files. Another side is that many senior officers, including secretaries, are exploiting the situation to indulge in corruption.”

To add fuel to the fire, CPI and RSP, constituents of the ruling LDF, publicly came out against education minister M.A. Baby for signing an agreement favourable to the self-financing colleges of the state. While CPI Minister and member of the subcommittee, Benoy Viswom, alleged the agreement was signed without the consent of the Cabinet, Baby replied that Benoy’s words are blatant lies.

Devaswom minister G. Sudhakaran and law minister M. Vijaya Kumar supported Baby, while the CPM students’ wing, SFI, accused Viswom of levelling baseless charges. The CPI students’ wing, AISF, has threatened the government with dire consequences if the agreement isn't withdrawn. The CM's studied silence on the issue is probably a portent of another storm. He is gearing up to hit back with the help of CPI and RSP.