A day after KM Mani resigned as Finance and Law Minister over the bar bribery fiasco, the State Excise and Ports Minister K Babu’s name has again popped up in the same case.
Biju Ramesh, bar hotelier and working president of the Kerala Hotel and Bar Association, is the complainant in both cases.
Ramesh told newspersons that he had personally handed over ₹1 crore in two tranches to Babu at his chamber in the Secretariat here earlier this year. Ramesh alleged that bar owners had collected ₹25 crore ‘as a common pool,’ of which ₹23.5 crore was given to Babu or recipients indicated by him.
According to Ramesh, the Vigilance Director refused to either acknowledge or take on record his complaint with regard to the role of the Excise Minister in the case. He said he was ready to undergo a lie detector test to prove his charges and dared the Minister to do it himself and come clean.
The Minister responded that the allegations were part of a plot to frame him after he had initiated legal proceedings against Ramesh when he had aired these allegations in public earlier. The Minister said he would press charges against the bar owner.
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has said he will keep the Finance portfolio with himself after octogenarian KM Mani was forced to resign following High Court strictures.
Chandy announced this while speaking to newspersons after the State Cabinet met for the first time this morning without Mani. Any decision on the new Finance Minister will be taken in consultation with Mani, he added.
Chief whip’s resignationAccording to Chandy, a decision on accepting the resignation of Mani loyalist Thomas Unniyadan, government chief whip, would also be taken in consultation with Mani.
Unniyadan’s was no more than a ‘sentimental response taken in the heat of the moment,’ he added.
Earlier in the morning, members of the Cabinet, including the Chief Minister, had trooped in one by one to meet Mani at his official residence.