Vigilance notice to Kerala BJP president in Medical college bribery case

Kerala's Vigilance and anti-corruption bureau on Monday served notice to BJP state Chief Kummanam Rajasekharan. The BJP leader has been asked to appear for questioning in the medical college IMC accreditation bribery case.

Notices have also been served to Satish Nair, the unofficial liaison officer to Rajasekharan in New Delhi. Superintendent of Police Vigilance department, K Jayakumar served the notices to the duo. While Rajasekharan has sought for two weeks time to appear before the officials, Satish has been asked to be present on August 24.

The notice comes a day after Union Minister Arun Jaitley visited Kerala and accused the LDF of supporting political killings of RSS and BJP workers. The Vigilance department has sent a notice on the day Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told



the Kerala assembly that the state would not hesitate to hand over the investigations in the case to the CBI.

An internal inquiry panel set up by the BJP had found that some of its leaders accepted a bribe of Rs.5.6 crore from a medical college owner to facilitate accreditation of the Indian Medical Council for his institute. The report was leaked to the media and what followed came as a major embarrassment to the party that had so far enjoyed a 'clean image'. Party functionary R S Vinod was expelled for accepting bribes.

The move is being looked at as the CPM's response to the BJP's allegations against it over the political killings in Kerala. The CPM had alleged that Arun Jaitley's visit was intended to divert people's attention from the multicrore bribery allegations.