Ex-bureaucrats send reports after BJP brass seeks views on Kerala poll debacle

Thiruvananthapuram, Jun 7 (PTI) The BJP's central leadership is learnt to have sought the views of three former bureaucrats and now associated with the party over the drubbing in the recent Assembly polls and they have sent it, sources said here on Monday.

Of the three former officers, two of them, Jacob Thomas and C V Ananda Bose, retired Kerala cadre IPS and IAS officers respectively, have sent "independent reports" on the "problems" within the party and reasons for the drubbing in the April 6 Assembly polls, party sources said.

Sources did not comment on whether such reports had any references to the allegations of "hawala" money transactions, vis-a-vis the highway robbery episode against some BJP state leaders.

Thomas and Bose were unavailable for comment.

It is reliably learnt that they have sent independent reports on issues within the Kerala BJP, reasons for its mass drubbing in the April 6 polls, about the growing factionalism and also some suggestions to improve the party's image in the state, sources here told PTI.

Also, one among them, in his report, even suggested that the central leadership entrust a "professional agency" to look into the party's defeat in the polls, in which BJP came a cropper after losing its lone Nemom seat.

The ruling CPI(M) and the opposition Congress in the state have accused the saffron party of using large amounts of black money in the assembly polls, in which it had failed to win any seat.

A Special Investigation Team, probing the heist case, had already questioned many BJP leaders in this regard.

The acrimony between the CPI(M) and BJP grew more and more with the initiation of the high-profile gold smuggling probe by Central agencies last year.

Allegations -of nexus and complicity in this case- against bigwigs associated with the Left party-led state government went to the extent of straining the ties between the centre and states. PTI LGK VGN APR ADMINISTRATOR APR ADMINISTRATOR