Stung by all-round criticism and fearing a huge backlash, the Kerala government on Wednesday decided not to withdraw the case against six Left legislators who had indulged in vandalism in the Assembly in 2015.
During the hearing on this matter in Thiruvananthapuram, the lower court directed all the legislators to appear before it on April 21.
After this, three impleading petitions came up before the court on Wednesday against the state government's decision to withdraw the case.
The court informed the counsels of Leader of opposition Ramesh Chennithala, State BJP president Kummanem Rajasekheran and the Kerala unit of Aam Aadmi Party that the case was not being withdrawn and asked why they had filed the petition. The counsels replied that the petitions need be taken up only if the state government withdraws the case.
The Vijayan government had earlier decided to withdraw the case after one of the legislators wrote to the government seeking withdrawal, as he said it was a politically motivated move.
On Tuesday, it was the Congress party in Kerala which slammed the state government for withdrawing the case. State Congress President M.M. Hassan expressed "shock" over how the government had withdrawn the cases that had "caused a lot of shame for the state" as six legislators had created ruckus and damaged property worth Rs 2 lakh in the Assembly on March 13, 2015.
The then Speaker, N. Sakthan, had asked for a Crime Branch probe into their action. The probe concluded that six legislators, including current State Minister for Local Self Government K.T. Jaleel, and former Minister and present CPI-M legislator E.P. Jayarajan, had taken part in the attack. Others named were legislators V. Sivankutty, Kunju Ahamed, C.K. Sadasivan and K. Ajith.
The present Assembly Speaker P. Sreeramakrishnan, who was not directly involved in the action, was around when the incident took place.
Reacting to the turn of events, Jayarajan asked "what's the big deal" if the state government decides to withdraw the case. "You just take a look at the number of cases the previous Congress government (2011-16) withdrew. These things do happen all the time," he said.
--IANS
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