A prominent Kerala hotelier, liquor bars one of his many interests, has captured the state’s imagination and shaken the government by taking on K M Mani, the veteran minister whom everyone in state politics holds in awe. Biju Ramesh, 50, working president of Kerala Bar Hotel Owners’ Association, has come up with audio recordings in which bar hotel owners were reportedly heard discussing bribes they had paid to Finance Minister K M Mani for renewal of their liquor licence. Last November, Ramesh said their association had paid Rs 1 crore against the minister’s demand of Rs 5 crore. This has led to a vigilance probe; Ramesh’s campaign is also one of the reasons why the government has watered down its liquor policy, allowing bars it had shut to reopen as beer or wine parlours. Mani, 83, is so revered that he is addressed as “Sir”, the only politician in the state to enjoy that privilege. The Catholic leader of the Kerala Congress (M), who has presented 12 budgets over the past 50 years, had never been accused of corruption before. The media was always soft on him; even the Left respects him, and no bar owner would have dared challenge him. Until Ramesh did. “Even if the government assures that the licences of all my bars will be renewed (pending for seven of the nine bars in his 12 hotels), I will not let up on Mani,” Ramesh says. “I have no worries even if the bars are not reopened. I have other businesses.” His Rajdhani Group has stakes in education (engineering, business and hospitality), real estate and general trading, including import of construction material. Ramesh also has the image of a strongman, is active with the Thiruvananthapuram chapter of Hindu Economic Forum, and, though he has taken on a UDF minister, has reportedly arranged his daughter’s marriage with the son of another minister — Adoor Prakash, who is a nominee of Ramesh’s Ezhava community. Decades ago, he fought on the street with K G Premshanker, then a DIG police who would eventually retired as DGP. Premshanker had divorced Ramesh’s sister. Old-timers of Thiruvanthapuram still recall the street fight; Ramesh waylaid his brother-in-law and dragged him out of his vehicle. Ramesh submitted some clips to vigilance on Wednesday, but not the disk of another conversation among bar owners about a bribe, saying he would hand it only to the court or the CBI. Ramesh had inherited the businesses of his father, G Ramesan, a prominent contractor in south Kerala in the 1960s-70s, and ventured into the hotel industry in 1972. Known as Contractor, Ramesan had vast tracts of land in Thiruvananthapuram city and had hundreds of shops on rent, several huge houses and convention centres in Thiruvananthapuram. Many of these houses were provided on nominal rent to politicians and bureaucrats; the late K Karunakaran had stayed in one when he was out of power. Ramesan was in the director board of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalan Yogam, a powerful organisation of the Hindu Ezhava community in Kerala. Ramesh today has a family temple, Venpalavattam Bhagavati Temple, in Thiruvananthapuram. After he took over his father’s businesses, Ramesh diversified into education and construction. The liquor business flourished when he married the daughter of E K Chandrasenan, an arrack businessman and a prime accused in the hooch deaths of 1982. In 2000, during a ban on arrack, police had raided Ramesh’s premises and took him into custody. Sources say Ramesh is upset with Mani because he stood with the Catholic Church in the demand for closure of all bars. Ramesh looks at this as a betrayal that led to the strict liquor policy (eventually watered down). Besides, taking on Mani would endear him to one section of the Ezhava community, who are opposed to prominent Hindu leader Vellappally Nateshan, general secretary of SNDP Yogam. Though Nateshan had opposed the liquor policy, he has been silent on Ramesh’s allegations. This is being seen by several as support to Mani, although Nateshan always laments the Christian community’s undue influence in government.
