Businessman’s suicide: Govt spares municipal chairperson

Thiruvananthapuram: Giving a clean chit to the chairperson of Anthoor municipality, the state government has suspended four officials in connection with the

suicide

of foreign-returned businessman Parayil Sajan.

Announcing the decision, local self government minister A C Moideen said that the four officials were responsible for the delay in issuing the ownership certificate to Sajan. The action has been taken against municipality secretary M K Girish, assistant engineer K Kalesh and overseers T A Augustine and B Sudheer.

“This was found out in the preliminary inquiry conducted by the department. The vigilance wing of the town planning department has been asked to conduct a detailed probe and submit the report within a week,” the minister said.

Meanwhile, the minister denied the allegations levelled against the chairperson of the municipality P K Shyamala and said it was up to the officials to clear the files coming before them. “For this, a chairperson cannot be blamed. Moreover, the chairperson is known to me for years and hence the allegations levelled against her cannot be taken seriously,” the minister said. On the allegation made by Sajan’s wife that the chairperson purposefully delayed the certificate due to personal vengeance, the minister said “the police are investigating the case.”

The engineering wing of the municipality had given the clearance to give the completion certificate to Sajan and it has been clearly mentioned in the file. However, later the secretary has denied it citing technical reasons. This could have been avoided, said the minister.

Earlier, the minister had summoned the municipality secretary and other officials to discuss the issue. The minister turned furious with the officers for the delay in issuing the completion certificate to Sajan citing flimsy reasons. The minister warned the officials that no one would be spared and alleged that the officials had made the government to answer for their fault.

The minister termed Sajan’s suicide most unfortunate and said it was an isolated incident. “The officials should take care that no applications are delayed citing technical reasons. All the applications coming to the local bodies should be considered in a most humanitarian manner,” he added.