The Premier and the Payouts

Kerala’s Leftist Chief Minister talks of probity, but his daughter’s alleged corruption exposes the hollowness of his moral posturing.

Kerala

When Pinarayi Vijayan swept to power in Kerala in 2016 and again in 2021, he had promised a government untainted by scandal, bolstered by a technocratic sheen and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s traditional moralism. Today, that façade has noticeably cracked - and not at the hands of the opposition, but from within his own family.

Last week, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs gave the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) permission to prosecute Vijayan’s daughter, Veena, in a corporate fraud case involving Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited (CMRL). The agency’s chargesheet, filed after months of investigation, is unambiguous: Veena and her private firm, Exalogic Solutions, received Rs. 2.73 crore (around $327,000) from CMRL without rendering any services. The SFIO concluded these payments were fraudulent.

The SFIO has invoked Section 447 of the Companies Act, a serious charge that carries a minimum sentence of six months, extendable to a decade. The Delhi High Court, rejecting CMRL’s petition for a stay on the investigation, has implicitly validated the agency’s pursuit.

What makes this case particularly scandalous is not just the alleged graft, but the hypocrisy it exposes at the heart of Kerala’s leftist regime. The CPI(M), long fond of presenting itself as cleaner and more upright than its political rivals, has found itself fumbling for a defence. Instead of insisting on accountability, party leaders have leapt to protect their supreme leader’s kin. M.A. Baby, the party’s newly minted general secretary, declared that Veena had done nothing wrong and asked critics to show what benefits CMRL gained from the state government in return. This distraction tactic evades the fundamental problem: if money was exchanged for no work done, it constitutes corporate fraud irrespective of whether favours were exchanged in return.

The brazenness is galling. Vijayan has built his political persona on an image of steely resolve and incorruptibility, even when his governance has drawn criticism for opacity and arrogance. He refused to answer questions when the allegations first surfaced last year, brushing them aside as part of a political smear campaign.

The opposition Congress has pounced on the matter. VD Satheesan, the leader of the opposition, has demanded Vijayan’s resignation, arguing that a chief minister cannot credibly remain in office while his daughter faces prosecution for financial misconduct.

The central leadership of the CPI(M), known for its tight discipline and internal debate, has been conspicuously silent. This is not just a local embarrassment but a national one. The party risks eroding whatever remains of its moral capital in the eyes of the public if it continues to pretend this is a non-issue. The central committee should immediately demand an explanation as the appearance of impropriety alone is enough to damage public trust. And the facts appear damning. That a private company agreed to pay large sums of money monthly to the daughter of a sitting chief minister without services rendered is not only deeply suspicious, it is politically radioactive.

The CPI(M) in Kerala has survived many storms, including corruption scandals that have dogged previous administrations. But never before has a direct family member of the chief minister been at the centre of such a serious financial controversy.

For decades, the Left has taken pride in scorning the venality of dynastic politics, accusing parties like the Congress of running family fiefdoms and mocking the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rhetoric of development while pointing to its crony capitalist underbelly. Yet when faced with strikingly similar charges involving its own top leader’s daughter, the comrades fall back on tired denials and whataboutery. The silence of Marxist intellectuals who would have raised hell had this involved a BJP or Congress scion is equally telling. The Left, which once prided itself on being the moral conscience of Indian politics, is now indistinguishable from the very establishment it once claimed to resist. Ideology, it turns out, is no vaccine against hypocrisy.