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Chargesheets were filed against former Kerala chief minister K Kaurnakaran, former minister T H Mustafa and seven officials, including three IAS officials, in the sensational palmolein import case before the vigilance court at Trivandrum on Friday.
The vigilance and anti-corruption bureau case is that the accused had caused a loss of Rs 232 million to the state by importing 15,000 tonnes of palmolein from Malaysia by violating central and state government rules.
The vigilance and anti-corruption bureau submitted the chargesheets after state Advocate General M K Damodaran filed an affidavit in the Kerala High Court saying that the sanction of the Lok Sabha Speaker was not necessary for prosecuting Karunakaran, an MP.
The bureau had delayed the submission of the chargesheet earlier due to confusion over the legal position.
The IAS officials involved in the case are former chief secretary S Padmakumar, chief electoral officer P J Thomas and Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation managing director Jiji Thomson.
The chargesheets were filed after the former chief minister exhausted all legal avenues of stalling the case, which he claimed was politically motivated. The special leave petition he filed in the Supreme Court challenging the Kerala High Court order dismissing his plea for quashing the first information report, was dismissed in March last year.
The apex court had turned down the SLP rejecting his allegation that the case was malafide or actuated by extraneous considerations.
The filing of the chargesheet is the culmination of an eight year-old legal battle, which begun with advocate Kallara Sukumaran filing a petition in the high court in 1993 seeking a direction to the state to register an appropriate crime in the case following allegations of corruption in the deal raised by M Vijayakumar, who was then a Communist Party of India-Marxist MLA and is now Speaker of the Kerala legislative assembly.
Vijayakumar himself took up the case when the high court dismissed Sukumaran's petition. He filed a first information report before the superintendent of police (vigilance) pleading registration of a case.
The SP turned down the plea and asked him to refer the case to the government, which was then headed by Karunakaran. Incidentally, Karunakaran was also in-charge of the vigilance portfolio at that time.
Vijayakumar then approached the high court, which dismissed his plea. A writ appeal he preferred in the division bench of the high court was also rejected. The Vijayakumar moved the Supreme Court with a SLP, which was also dismissed.
The case was revived when the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front came to power in May 1996. Chief Minister E K Nayanar directed the vigilance department to investigate. Karunakaran challenged the move in the high court, which rejected his plea on July 1, 1997.
Pending Karunakaran's SLP in the Supreme Court, the vigilance and anti-corruption bureau filed a chargesheet in the vigilance court on November 23, 1998.
According to the chargesheet, the accused had caused a loss of Rs 232 million to the exchequer by importing the palmolein at exorbitant rates. The chargesheet alleged that the agreement was reached to import 15,000 tonnes of palmolein from P&E Ltd. following a meeting between Karunakaran, who was then chief minister, with representatives of the firm and its Indian representative Mala Trading Corporation in New Delhi in 1991.
The chargesheet said that the imports were in violation of the rules and procedures. The agreement was entered into by the Kerala State Civil Supplies Corporation with P&E Ltd without sanction from the state government and without qualifying the price.
The price was fixed much later on February 24, 1992, which was far above the average procurement price of $ 392.25 of the State Trading Corporation.
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