Thiruvananthapuram: Senior counsel Harish Salve, appearing for Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the SNC-Lavalin case, has rubbished the Central Bureau of Investigation’s charges against the chief minister.
Salve submitted to the Kerala High Court on Friday that the charge sheet filed by the CBI in the SNC-Lavalin case was “baseless” and that the CBI argument that Vijayan’s decision on the Lavalin contract caused a loss to the exchequer was not tenable.
Salve argued that the contract signed with SNC-Lavalin was in the backdrop of an acute power crisis faced by the state and that it was baseless to say that the then ministry was ignorant of the decision to award the contract to the company.
Salve’s arguments came when he appeared for Vijayan to contest a revision petition filed by the CBI against a special court order discharging Vijayan in the case. The Thiruvananthapuram CBI court had discharged Vijayan and others in the case in 2013.
The case against Vijayan is that during his tenure as power minister between 1996 and 1998, he along with the other accused hatched a conspiracy to award the contract for the renovation and modernisation of three hydro-electric projects in the state to foreign firm SNC-Lavalin at an exorbitant cost.
The case has acquired added political significance given the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ambitions of a bigger political presence in Kerala in the context of its growing influence across the country. The BJP presently has a sole representative in the 140-member Kerala assembly.
