By IANS,
Thiruvananthapuram: In the first open attack against Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, the Congress-led opposition in the Kerala assembly alleged that his son V. Arunkumar was behind scuttling a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the lottery mafia.
Congress legislator V.D. Satheesan, speaking in the house, blamed Achuthanandan for playing to the gallery by writing to union Home Minister P. Chidambaram seeking a CBI probe into the lottery mafia operating in the state.
“The home minister wrote back asking you (Achuthanandan) to register a case and then demand a probe, but it is 55 days since you received the letter but you are silent on it, and it is now clear that your son is behind the scuttling of the CBI probe,” said Satheesan.
The opposition also attacked Achuthanandan for influencing the judiciary to get a favourable verdict in the Idamalayar corruption case.
However, Achuthanandan provoked the opposition benches by drifting away from the lottery issue and instead referring to the recent Kozhikode ice cream parlour sex case and the Idamalayar corruption issue which has seen former minister R. Balakrishnan Pillai cooling his heels in jail here after the Supreme Court last week confirmed his sentence of a year’s imprisonment.
On seven occasions in the course of this debate the opposition rushed to the well of the house and the treasury benches shouted down the opposition.
To cool tempers, Speaker K. Radhakrishnan adjourned the house for close to an hour but after resumption, the situation remained the same, forcing the speaker to rush through the listed business for the day and adjourn the house for the day.