V S Achuthanandan finds a political weapon in Law Academy crisis

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Veteran CPM leader and administrative reforms commission chairman

V S Achuthanandan

has taken up the

law academy

issue to open a new war front inside the CPM. VS, on Monday, wrote a letter to revenue minister

E Chandrasekharan

seeking a probe on the misuse of assigned land by the law academy management. He also publicly decried CPM state secretary’s stand on the issue.

Sources in the CPM said VS is using the issue to target the official faction as he is aware of the strong relation of Law Academy chairman N Narayanan Nair and her daughter

Lakshmi Nair

with a section of CPM leaders. Narayanan Nair’s brother Koliyakode Krishnan Nair is a confident of CM Pinarayi Vijayan and a critic of VS. It is learnt that Koliyakode was one among the few state committee members who had criticised the central committee decision to bail out VS, based on the PB commission report on inner party issues.

The CPM leadership suspects that VS is smartly using the opportunity to take on Nair and two senior members in the CMO who have close relationship with the academy. The officials in question had been targets of VS in the past too.

The letter by VS to the revenue minister would compel the latter to constitute a probe into the misuse of land by the academy. Earlier, the minister said there had been no complaint against the academy.

VS listed out alleged violations in his letter. “If land is assigned for a specific purpose by the government, it needs to be used for that. If the management has done anything to violate that, such constructions need to be taken over by the government. It needs to be found out whether the land had been assigned to the current trust that governs the academy,” VS wrote.

He also pointed out the flat construction by a private builder on the land allotted to the academy on Punnen road. “Is it legal that the academy constructed flats and sold them in association with a real estate company on the land allotted by the government,” he asked the revenue minister.

Earlier in the day, VS publicly despised

Kodiyeri Balakrishnan

’s stance that Law Academy crisis is a student issue only. “It is a public issue,” he told reporters on the side-lines of a campaign organized by the joint council here. “Those who have to control these people should not surrender before them,” he said.