Will deal with ED politically and legally: Kerala CPI-M

New Delhi/Thiruvananthapuram, June 29 (IANS) A day after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) temporarily attached CPI-M’s office land and eight bank accounts in Kerala’s Thrissur district totalling Rs 29 crore in a bank fraud case, state party secretary M.V. Govindan said the ED is engaged in nonsense and there appears to be no change in the style of the Centre.

“We will deal with this issue politically and legally. All that we have heard is through the media about this attachment. The practice of buying property in the name of the district secretary is the practice of the party for long,” said Govindan, who is presently in Delhi to attend CPI-M’s national committee meetings.

Surprisingly, the ED has now named CPI-M as a key accused in the case after a probe revealed that money involved in the scam was diverted to party bank accounts.

The ED has found fault as the land has been registered in the name of Thrissur district secretary M M Varghese.

Varghese on Saturday said he has no clue of what the ED has done as neither he nor the party has any information of what has happened and the only thing he knows is what the media has been saying.

Affairs of the Thrissur unit of the CPI-M have come under ED scrutiny ever since the Karuvannur Service Cooperative Bank scam to the tune of Rs 300 crore surfaced and top CPI-M leaders including a sitting legislator A.C. Moideen, former Lok Sabha member P.K. Biju, former legislator M.K. Kannan, Varghese and quite a few top local leaders have been questioned.

This is the third attachment done by the ED as they have attached properties worth Rs 87 crore so far in the bank scam.

During the recent Lok Sabha polls, this bank scam was at the centre of politics and the BJP and its winning candidate actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi had raked up the issue during his campaign.

Gopi helped the BJP to open its account in Kerala by winning a stunning victory with a margin of over 72,000 votes.