THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Chief Secretary S.M. Vijayanand has recommended a high-level inquiry against Vigilance director Jacob Thomas in connection with the irregularities in the purchase of a dredger while he was serving as ports director and also suggested that he may be kept off the Vigilance chief post. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who has been sitting on the file for more than a month, has decided to seek the opinion of the director-general of prosecution on the matter.
The chief secretary recommended action against the Vigilance chief after endorsing a detailed inquiry report of additional chief secretary (finance) K.M. Abraham that found Mr Jacob Thomas guilty of criminal offences, besides causing pecuniary loss of about Rs 15 crore to the state exchequer in the purchase of cutter suction dredger from a foreign firm IHC Merwede overlooking the lowest tender by the public sector firm BEML.
The chief secretary recommended that a police inquiry under a team of two or three senior and efficient officers, ably supported by technical experts of impeccable credentials, may be ordered and Mr Jacob Thomas be asked to stand down from the Vigilance director post till the inquiry is complete. According to the chief secretary’s report, “perusal of the report (K.M. Abraham’s report) shows that many of the actions (of Jacob Thomas) go beyond procedural irregularities and have grave implications.They include undue favour to a foreign company against a domestic public sector company, possible forgery, cheating, deliberate misrepresentation of fact to government and abusing the tender process to distort the outcome.”
It may be recalled that the Chief Minister’s indecision on the chief secretary’s report against the Vigilance chief had raised many eyebrows. The government even turned down many RTI applications seeking a copy of the report against Mr Thomas. The file reached the chief minister’s office in the first week of December and he took a decision on it only by January 28. There has been resentment among many IAS officers, who felt that the government was blindly supporting Mr Thomas and allowing him to act upon flimsy allegations against senior IAS officers like K.M. Abraham and additional chief secretary Tom Jose.
Though the chief minister had earlier sought to defend Mr Thomas maintaining that the Vigilance already had probed the allegations and given a clean chit to him, it was later revealed that the Vigilance probe was conducted while Mr Thomas was serving as ADGP (Vigilance). Meanwhile, the action on the finance inspection report on various other allegations against Mr Thomas, including purchase of solar panels, laptops and furniture for ports director, was also pending. He also faced allegations of forest land encroachment in Karnataka and a case was also pending against his wife in this connection.
