Kerala’s Home Department has asked for the records of a preliminary vigilance inquiry from 2006 that involved Gyanesh Kumar, today the Chief Election Commissioner, who was then the state’s Public Works Department secretary. The inquiry arose after Lee See Been, a Malaysian civil engineer working as chief project manager for the Indo-Malaysian PATI-BEL consortium, died by suicide in Kuala Lumpur. The consortium was upgrading the M. C. Road under the Kerala State Transport Project, and Lee is reported to have struggled for a long time to get project bills cleared.
His suicide note reportedly mentioned Kumar and alleged corruption and irregularities in how the project was carried out. The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau began a preliminary inquiry at the time, but the matter stalled and officials were unable to trace several important documents. The Crime Branch had also shown interest, yet an initial search for relevant files reportedly turned up nothing. The move comes just before the INDIA bloc’s nationwide campaign against Kumar over alleged bias and the conduct of the Special Intensive Revision. A senior official indicated the step has a dual purpose: scrutinising the CEC while reviving a controversy from the earlier Left Democratic Front government’s term.
That puts the CPM in an awkward position because it was in power when the allegations first surfaced, even as it leads opposition to Kumar’s role. CPM leader Thomas Isaac has also recalled the 2006 episode publicly. The Election Commission has not been reported to have responded to the revived allegations, and the Home Minister had not commented when the news broke.