The assistant private secretary of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, C.M Ravindran has been served a notice in relation with the gold smuggling case on Thursday and is expected to appear before the ED at their Kochi office on Friday.
The notice was served as gold smuggling case prime accused Swapna Suresh's relation with Ravindran surfaced.
Since this gold smuggling fiasco has come to light, Kerala CM Vijayan has cleared out his involvement time after time but has said that as the probe intensifies, heartbeats of, many will increase.
However, the opposition to Pinarayi’s CPI(M) in the state, Congress and BJP have taken shots at the ruling party. After the arrest of Sivasankar and CIP(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s son Bineesh Kodiyeri, the opposition leaders from both the party have dug Vijayan’s statement and asked the rhetorical question, “Whose heartbeat?”
Ravindran has been in the personal staff of Balakrishnan in 2006-11, when he was the Home Minister in V.S. Achuthanandan and later when Achuthanandan became the Leader of Opposition (2011-16) again he was present and when Vijayan took over as Chief Minister in 2016, Ravindran willed major power.
Political analysts feel what brews trouble is that the probe agencies might have established a Sivasankar-Ravindran axis in the office of Vijayan -- that was the deciding factor and was the last word when it came to decision making.
Soon after Sivasankar's arrest, the CPI-M leadership tried to play it like -- Sivasankar being an IAS officer -- a central government employee, so more than Vijayan, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who should be worried.
Should things turn sour for Ravindran, Vijayan could also feel the heat.
(With Inputs From IANS)
