In a major blow to the United Democratic Front government, the inquiry commissioner and special judge P.K. Haneefa on Monday directed the vigilance to conduct a detailed inquiry into the role of chief minister Oommen Chandy in the palm oil import case.
The court, while rejecting the report filed by the vigilance giving a clean chit to Mr Chandy, and directed the agency to submit a detailed report on Mr Chandy’s role in three months.
The palm oil case relates to alleged corruption in importing 15,000 tonnes of palm oil from Malaysia at exorbitant rates, which allegedly caused a loss to exchequer to the tune of `2.32 crores. The deal took place in 1991-92 when the late Mr K. Karunarakaran was the chief minister and Mr Oommen Chandy was the finance minister.
The vigilance filed its report on May 14, a day after the UDF was elected to power in the state.
However, the court rejected the report on three grounds; Mr Oommen Chandy, who was the then finance minister, had signed on the palm oil file when the matter was brought by the then food minister T.H. Musthafa as an outside agenda in the Cabinet. The palm oil file was in Mr Chandy’s office for one-and-a-half months and, hence, he was aware of the entire deal.
The vigilance SIT which probed the palm oil case had filed the report before the vigilance court in May saying there was no need for a further probe. The SIT report neither contained any reference to Mr Chandy nor recommended any additions to the list of accused in the case.