Congress files breach of privilege against Kerala Minister, CPI-M secy

Thiruvananthapuram, Jan 31 With the Ordinance to tweak the Lokayukta guidelines now gathering heat in Kerala, on Monday the Congress party filed a breach of privilege against State Finance Minister P. Rajeev and CPI-M State Secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan for their statement that the present Lokayukta directives are unconstitutional.

The Congress party has been attacking the government against the manner in which Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan early this month while presiding a cabinet meeting from his hospital bed in the US, decided to float an Ordinance tweaking Lokayukta's crucial powers. A few days later a Congress delegation met Governor Arif Mohammed Khan and told him that moving forward with this extremely regressive legislation will render the Lokayukta toothless and asked him not to do so.

When this became an issue, Rajeev told the media that the Kerala High Court has ruled that certain guidelines in the Lokayukta Bill passed in 1999 by the then Left government headed by E.K. Nayanar was unconstitutional.

Balakrishnan also mentioned the same in his article lashing out at the Congress opposition for raking up a non-issue and also mentioned the Bill that his party's government then passed was unconstitutional.

It was against this Congress MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan moved a breach of privilege against the two top leaders of the CPI-M, after it was pointed out that there were no such court directives at all and hence it was a breach of privilege of the members of the Assembly.

The second biggest ally of the Pinarayi Vijayan government - the CPI's state secretary Kanam Rajendran also expressed surprise and said there was no need for this undue haste, when the assembly is all set to be convened.

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