Kerala chief minister VD Satheesan on Sunday termed the revelations made by former state chief secretary Jiji Thomson about Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar “extremely serious” and demanded that Kumar step down from his post.
“No further evidence is required to prove that Gyanesh Kumar acted as an agent of the BJP.
It is now evident that he served as an operative who subverted democracy on behalf of the BJP,” Satheesan said in a post on social platform ‘X’.
“We were friends at the time. He (Kumar) asked me about my post retirement plans. I could become an MP and a minister in the Union government. “In every district we have had protests against him.
That’s when he said that the best idea was to contest as a BJP candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Joseph also claimed Thomson was appointed an independent director of Cochin Shipyard after the event, a position he held from 2017 to 2020.
I said I had no specific plans but wanted to work in an area to shape the future of the young generation. He said that was the best way forward,” Thomson told a Malayalam news channel. Asked whether Congress planned to protest against Kumar, Vadra said protests had already been held across the country. In Delhi also there were protests,” she said. He claimed Thomson attended the event and “lavishly praised” Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Union government’s initiatives.
Joseph shared photographs showing Thomson on the dais and speaking into a microphone. “I was the state president of the Minority Morcha at the time. A senior leader, highly respected by Sangh Parivar workers in Keralam, called me and asked me to invite Jiji Thomson to the programme.
He said that in 2017, when he was state president of the BJP’s Minority Morcha, a senior Sangh Parivar leader had asked him to invite Thomson to a Minority Morcha event in Kochi held on June 26, 2017, to honour Mar Chrysostom.
Former minister and UDF leader K M Mani was also present, according to the photographs. He told me that Thomson was interested in coming with us,” Joseph said. BJP leader Jiji Joseph on Sunday responded to Thomson’s claim.
