CPM Kannur district committee member alleges fund fraud in party

Kannur: CPM Kannur district committee member V Kunhikrishnan has raised serious allegations against party leaders, particularly party's Payyannur MLA T I Madhusoodanan, accusing them of misappropriating funds collected for a slain party worker's family and election campaigns.During an interview with a news channel, Kunhikrishnan revealed around Rs 46 lakh was misappropriated from the fund raised by the party for helping the family of C V Dhanraj, a CPM worker who was hacked to death allegedly by a group of BJP-RSS workers in Payyannur in July 2016.He also alleged misappropriation of funds in connection with the construction of a party office. The incidents happened during Madhusoodanan's tenure as CPM Payyannur area secretary.According to Kunhikrishnan, a former party Payyannur area secretary himself, the party had collected Rs 1 crore for the martyr's fund set up in Dhanraj's name. It was decided to construct a house for Dhanraj's family and deposit the remaining amount to his family's account."The fund raising began in 2016 during Madhusoodanan's tenure. However, when I became the party area secretary in 2020, I was responsible for presenting the report regarding the fund at the party conference held in 2021. For the same, I checked the details related to the fund and some irregularities came to my attention," said Kunhikrishnan."As per the details, more than Rs 34 lakh was spent for the construction of the house for Dhanraj's family. It was also noticed that an amount of Rs 29.25 lakh had been given to the contractor who built the house while Rs 5 lakh was transferred to the area secretary's personal account. Another amount of Rs 40 lakh was spent for the construction of the party area committee office as per the details. There was no need to use the martyr's fund to construct the party office as separate funds were already collected from party workers for the same," he said.Kunhikrishnan added that he had reported the matter to the party district committee along with required evidence. "However, the party did not take appropriate action. Then party state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and party secretary M V Govindan were informed about the fraud. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan was also aware of the fraud," said the CPM leader.Meanwhile, CPM district committee rejected the claims stating that the allegations raised had already been examined by the party and were found baseless."Money has not been misused either from the martyr ‘s fund or the party's election fund," said district secretary K K Ragesh.