Chandy To The Left, Chandy...

Corruption, sleaze defined a regime that Kerala had voted out. Now another Chandy & Co keeps the headlines rolling.

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FOR a while now, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan has done well to recalibrate his tough image. The septuagenarian Marxist leader sports a softer smile more frequently than usual, hilarity makes a dash in his social media int­eractions—it was clear from the CM’s tweets during the BJP’s recent Jana­raksha yatra in his state. Even so, black humour seems chasing him no end.

The latest instance is that of a cabinet colleague of Vijayan’s having to quit. Tho­mas Chandy is the third minister in a year’s time to resign from the Pinarayi government, formed in May 2016 after the Left combine won with the poll slogan Ellam Sariyakum(Everything will be alri­ght). If public criticism stung the preceding Congress regime defined by stinking tales of corruption, the same menace has already brought major embarrassment to the current dispensation. It seems to be rapidly losing plot after assuming the high moral ground.

Vijayan, 72, did try to be unfazed, virtua­lly tweaking his grin to benignity—in ret­aining scam-stained Chandy of the NCP. It took the Marxist party’s chief coalition partner CPI to use pressure tactics to ensure the 70-year-old transport minister de-boarded the power chariot. It’s not just regarding Chandy that Vijayan got flak, there’s condemnation over the way he is handling another high-profile case. It’s over the probe into a ‘solar scam’ centering around ‘conwoman’ Saritha S. Nair targeting Congress veteran Oommen Chandy, who was the CM.