Image credit : Illustrative Image

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form, said Karl Marx, the prophet by whom the CPM, which leads the Left Democratic Front Government in Kerala, swears.

And on Wednesday Kerala High Court questioned the government for its lack of a reasonable form of reason. The Collector of Alappuzha district had submitted reports detailing the violations made by Kerala Transport Minister Thomas Chandy for his Lake Palace resort in the district.

The efforts some of the CPM leaders took, especially Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan through his demeaning stoic silence, to portray that the minister committed no violations after the LDF assumed power only left people with doubts.

On Wednesday, the High Court asked the State attorney some of these. Does the Government have a single policy against the poor and the affluent for such land-grabbing acts? Is not the minister getting special consideration? Was not the common man getting a harsh treatment in such cases?

The refrain of the ministers and CPM leaders has been that the government was seeking the views of law experts to proceed on the Collector’s report against a Minister who has had a shady past when he earlier known as Kuwait Chandy. The CPM mouthpiece ‘Deshabhimani’ had years ago ‘wasted’ its newsprint writing so much about his `wrong-doings’ as a business tycoon in Kuwait.

The CPI, which has had a new face with Kanam Rajendran at the helm of affairs, has stood its ground so far, disturbing the CPM leadership. Kanam led the recent LDF rally in the southern parts of Kerala and kept mum when Thomas Chandy at the reception in Alappuzha blurted out at his being accused of land-grabbing, forgetting that the rally was meant to boost LDF image.

In the State’s northern parts, CPM secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan led the rally, travelled in Mini Cooper of a person facing money laundering charges. The party faulted the local organisers for this ‘carelessness’.

People cannot expect anything exceptional when the LDF Government table in the Assembly tomorrow the solar scam report which indicts another Chandy, former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, and several Congress leaders of corruption and sexually abusing the owner of Team Solar, Sarita S Nair.

They are reminded of what one of the young firebrand Congress MLAs VT Balaram recently said on a social media post that the Congress should end this politics of ‘adjustment’.

People do not forget that at the peak of the solar scam during the Oommen Chandy regime, the LDF led a secretariat siege march for nothing short of the Chief Minister’s resignation in 2013. It herded lakhs of party followers to the Secretariat gates. Suddently, contrary the marxist theory, the protest, not the State, withered away on a government assurance of a judicial commission.

The talk of the town then was all about this adjustment – CPM leaders would go scot-free in the case where a breakaway communist group leader TP Chandrasekharan was hacked to death in 2012.

People should not expect anything spectacular from the CPM for its leader Pinarayi has said several times: “You know nothing about this party.”

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author’s own. The author is a freelancer.