Chandy pleads innocence again in bribery case

After the UDF assumed power, the Education portfolio went to the Muslim League. Soon, Dr Yuhanon Mar Philoxinos, Metropolitan of the MJOS Church who was waiting for government sanction for its B.Ed college which had passed the mandatory inspection, wrote a letter to then chief minister A.K. Antony, saying Muslim League leaders were asking him to cough up a hefty bribe for the sanction to come through.

Philoxinos also sent a copy of the letter to Chandy, who was the UDF convenor at the time. He later said he had also talked about the matter to Chandy and T.M. Jacob, who was then the Irrigation minister. Meanwhile, the Antony government had drawn up a list of 150 colleges which it found eligible for sanction. The Kerala HC, however, asked the government to restrict the number to 75 after many of the colleges were found unfit for sanction.

Though the MJOS Church’s college passed the inspection carried out by Calicut University, it did not figure in the government’s list. It was then that an MLA of a splinter group of the Kerala Congress (Secular), P.C. George, went to the media with Philoxinos’s letter to Antony.

A social activist, Joemon Puthenpurackal, then moved the court demanding prosecution of those who asked for a bribe and sought that Education minister Nalakath Soopy and Higher Education secretary K. Mohandas be listed as accused. Both Chandy and Jacob were made witnesses in the case.

Chandy, in his first appearance before the court in March 2004, had denied that the Metropolitan had told him anything about the demand for bribe though he admitted to have read the copy of the letter written to Antony.

During his appearance, Jacob, whom Chandy had refused to accommodate in his Cabinet after Antony quit, said he had discussed the demand for bribe with Chandy. But during his deposition today, Chandy stuck to his stand and said neither had the Metropolitan talked to him about the demand for bribe nor had Jacob discussed any such thing with him.