THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Agriculture minister and secretary, V.S. Sunilkumar and Raju Narayana Swamy signed on the dotted line to remove Dr K.. Prathapan as director of State Horticultural Mission on Thursday. Apart from the three vigilance cases against Mr. Prathapan, another discrepancy was also noted against him for setting up a strawberry processing unit at Munnar at a cost of Rs 4 crore. With the GO issued against him, he was forced to revert to his parent organisation, Kerala Agriculture University at Vellanikkara in Thrissur.
Agriculture department sources told this newspaper that Mr Prathapan was facing three vigilance cases related to vegetable procurement for Horticorp, irregularities in setting up a vegetable outlet at Thiruvananthapuram district panchayat office at Pattom to the tune of Rs 9.98 lakh where now an outlet of Indian Coffee House is being constructed now and also on the Central fund allocation through the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY).
“The strawberry processing plant was setup on the banks of Muthirapuzha River in Munnar during K.P. Mohanan’s tenure. A benami contractor Raju (close to ex-minister K.P. Mohanan) who runs a construction company, ‘Green Thoughts’ which was functioning in a fake address in Thycaud, Thiruvananthapuram was allocated to construct the plant at Munnar,” said an agriculture department official.
“When PWD manual says works above Rs 1 lakh should be sanctioned only after tendering process, here no such formalities were completed,” a top official said. Until now only vigilance case has been slapped against procurement of vegetables in Horticorp when there should be a similar probe on construction related works that comes under agriculture department,” said a top government official.
