Pinarayi Vijayan's closest aide Ravindran ducks appearance before ED

The closest aide of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, CM Ravindran, did not to appear before the Enforcement Directorate at 10.30 am at their Kochi office on Monday.

The Kerala Legislative Assembly resumed its Budget session on Monday and Ravindran was caught on TV news camera's arriving at the Assembly.

Ravindran, through an e-mail, informed ED officials that since he is busy with the ongoing Assembly session, he will be unable to appear before them.

Ravindran's former colleague in the office of Vijayan during 2016-21 tenure, the most powerful bureaucrat then, M.Sivasankar is presently cooling his heels in a jail at Kochi after being arrested by the ED when allegations of massive corruption arose in the pet project of Vijayan (Life Mission flats) as levelled by the prime accused in the gold smuggling case and also in the Life Mission case — Swapna Suresh.

Though Ravindran feigned ignorance of knowing Swapna when this allegation first surfaced in 2020, though he was questioned by the ED and let off, now, following the arrest of Sivasankar, the intimate chat in the middle of night between Swapna and Sivasankar, which surfaced last week has now become a matter of the major discussion in the social media, with Ravindran coming under heavy attack and the hypocritical stand of the Kerala CPI (M).

Today, the social media is discussing on how CPI-M, during the tenure of Oommen Chandy (2011-16) came under massive attack from Vijayan and the present lot of CPI-M leaders, when the solar scam broke out and over the allegations levelled by the accused in the case Saritha Nair against leaders like Chandy and numerous Congress leaders.

But strangely, though Swapna has levelled huge allegations against Vijayan and his entire family and two former CPI (M) minister's and the Speaker during 2016-21, the talk of the town now is why is it that none of them are taking legal actions against Swapna for her revelations.

And now with Ravindran not appearing before ED, all eyes are on what the game plan of the ED: as the present assembly session comes to a close only on March 30, will the ED wait until then and if so, then it's going to be fodder for the Congress-led Opposition?