Former Kerala CEO’s appointment as Secretary to CM; CPM uses Rahul Gandhi’s words to attack Congress

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has strongly criticised the appointment of the state’s former Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Rathan U. Kelkar, as the Secretary to the newly elected Chief Minister, V.D. Satheesan, arguing that the move severely compromises the credibility of the recently concluded Assembly elections.

In an official statement released on Saturday, the CPM State Secretariat asserted that this administrative shift validates the Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) long-standing allegations regarding the Election Commission’s "biased and opaque" conduct favouring the United Democratic Front (UDF), which won a landslide victory in the state. "Kerala has never witnessed a precedent where an election chief is rewarded with a high-profile administrative role immediately after the polls, bearing all the hallmarks of a quid pro quo arrangement," the CPM statement read. Drawing parallels to national politics, the CPM turned the spotlight on the Congress leadership. The party recalled that when a similar administrative appointment occurred recently in West Bengal—where the former CEO was appointed Chief Secretary by the new BJP government—Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had publicly condemned it. Posting on X, Gandhi had stated, "In the BJP-EC's 'chor bazaar' [thieves' market], the bigger the theft, the bigger the reward." The All India Congress Committee (AICC) leadership had similarly termed such post-poll bureaucratic placements as a "fixed match" and a sign of shameless collusion. The CPM Secretariat challenged the Congress leadership to apply the same standards to the current situation in Kerala. "Rahul Gandhi and the AICC must now clarify whether this appointment does not expose a shameless collusion and match-fixing between the Congress and the Election Commission in Kerala," the opposition party demanded. Furthermore, the CPM reiterated its grievances regarding electoral discrepancies during the voting process. The party alleged that under the pretext of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) system, legitimate voters were systematically disenfranchised while irregularities were ignored. They also accused the Commission of handling the voter registration and revision process with a clear bias that ended up hurting the democratic process. Compounding their allegations of institutional bias, the CPM Secretariat highlighted past complaints involving structural interference, citing it as blatant evidence of external political influence in the state's democratic process.