Thiruvananthapuram: Due to High Court’s observations, four ministers had to step down in the history of Kerala, three of them being Congress or UDF leaders. At the same time, there seems to be a curse on the transport department to have the maximum number of resignations.
P. S. Sreenivasan (1971), K. K. Balakrishnan (1983), R. Balakrishna Pillai (1995), P. R. Kurup (1999), Neelalohithadasan Nadar (2000), K. B. Ganesh Kumar (2003), Mathew T. Thomas (2009), A . K. Saseendran (2017) and now Thomas Chandy were transport ministers. It was former chief minister K. Karunakaran who was to step down over the Rajan case, the custodial murder of an engineering student.
Three Congress ministers, two Kerala Congress leaders and an NCP minister had to quit. Mr Pillai had to resign after the 'Punjab model speech' in 1985 calling for armed struggle. In 1995, the forest minister K. P. Viswanathan had to quit for his alleged links with the sandalwood mafia.
In 2015, the finance minister K. M. Mani had to leave office halfway in the second Oommen Chandy Government after the High Court said Caesar's wife must be above suspicion. Excise minister K. Babu offered to quit in 2016, but Mr Chandy did not forward his resignation to the Governor.
Others who had to resign after allegations include P. J. Joseph, T. U. Kuruvila, Mons Joseph, K. K. Ramachandran Master.
Thomas Chandy is the third minister to quit from the 17-month-old Pinarayi Vijayan government, after E. P. Jayarajan, who faced nepotism charges and A. K. Saseendran caught in a phone sex trap.
