Political controversies have started dovetailing the approaching Kerala assembly polls, due early next year. Last week, a widely circulated Malayalam daily in the state published a report claiming that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had summoned Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s son Vivek Kiran Vijayan to its office in Kochi back in February 2023 as part of an ongoing investigation, the details of which were not referenced by the newspaper.

This prompted Anil Akkara, a former legislator of the Opposition Congress, to claim that Vivek’s summoning was linked to the 2020 case of gold smuggling through diplomatic channels, in which allegations had been made against the chief minister, as well as a case of irregularities in the state government’s Life Mission programme.

Leader of the

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