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Sex scandal forces Kerala minister to go down

D Jose in Thiruvananthapuram

Kerala Transport and Forest Minister A Neelalohitadasan Nadar resigned from the E K Nayanar ministry Saturday.

He thus became the first member of a Communist-led government to step down following charges of sexual harassment.

Chief Minister Nayanar confirmed that he received Nadar's resignation letter. He said a member of the Janata Dal (Socialist) would take Nadar's place.

Asked about the inquiry into the charges against the minister, Nayanar said the matter would be decided by the cabinet.

JD-S president M P Veerendra Kumar had demanded a judicial inquiry into the charge levelled against the minister by Transport Secretary Nalini Netto and the claim of Nadar's wife that a forest mafia was behind the controversy.

In 1964, P T Chacko of the Congress ministry, led by R Shankar, had resigned after a lift he gave to a woman in his official car snowballed into a major scandal.

Nadar, who put up a brave front till Friday, was shaken after a leading English daily unfolded another sexual harassment case involving an Indian Forest Service official from Uttar Pradesh.

Prakriti Srivastava alleged that the minister tried to outrage her modesty after he summoned her to the government guesthouse in Kozhikode early in 1999. She said she had orally complained about the attempt to the forests principal secretary and the chairperson of the Kerala State Women's Commission.

The young IFS official was planning to make a written complaint to the Women's Commission Saturday about the incident and other attempts the minister made to harass her, the newspaper report said.

The minister, the report alleged, had grabbed Srivastava. She was quoted as saying that the minister continued to harass her over the phone after she strongly resisted his advances.

Netto had also complained of attempts by the minister to harass her after the unsavoury incident in the minister's room in the Assembly Complex on December 21.

Nadar has denied the charges. His main defence is that two members of his personal staff were present in the complex when Netto claimed that he had molested her.

Nadar accused a well-entrenched forest mafia behind the scandal. He said the latest complaint from a forest official was evidence of the hands of the forest mafia. He claimed that the mafia had turned against him after he stopped them plundering forest wealth.

A section in the Communist Party of India-Marxist had played a key role in forcing Nadar to quit. This camp had complained to CPI-M all-India general secretary Harkishan Surjeet about the "attempt by the leadership to protect the minister."

But Nayanar denied the charge. He said his ministry had tried to maintain the best standards and morals.

The women's organisations in the state have been up in arms against the minister from the day reports about the affair started appearing. Anweshi and the Kerala Stree Vedi, two organisations which were instrumental in exposing the Kozhikode sex scandal, allegedly involving former industries minister and Indian Union Muslim League leader P K Kunhalikutty, had threatened to agitate.

The Mahila Morcha filed a public interest petition in the high court not only against Nadar but also against Nayanar, for not taking action on Netto's complaint.

The Morcha celebrated Nadar's resignation by proceeding through the streets of the capital with an effigy of Nadar, which activists kept beating with brooms.

The State Women's Commission, which has always played a pro-active role in such cases, had intriguingly kept silent on the two incidents. Commission chairperson Sughathakumari said the commission would look into the matter only if it receives a complaint.

However, the commission has registered suo moto cases in the past. Sugathakumari explained that this was in the cases of poor people, who did not have the wherewithal to approach the commission.

Netto, for her part, expressed satisfaction over Nadar's resignation. The senior IAS official, who was transferred to the finance department as tax secretary on Nadar's request, said she had not complained immediately after the incident because a minister was involved in it.

Moreover, her seniority came in the way. "As a senior official I had more responsibilities. A junior official could have done whatever she liked without thinking about the consequences," she said.

ALSO SEE:
Another officer 'sexually harassed', minister to quit

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