The Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) on Thursday (September 10, 2026) signalled that the United Democratic Front (UDF) government would choose a path of heedfulness in calibrating a legal and political response to the Enforcement Directorate’s (ED) report recommending the registration of a case under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1985, against former Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, his daughter T. Veena and son-in-law and former Tourism Minister P.A. Mohamed Riyas in the CMRL-Exalogic pay-off case.

KPCC president Sunny Joseph told reporters that the meeting of top leaders, including Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan and District Congress Committee (DCC) presidents, prima facie dismissed the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] stance that the ED had used the questionable investigation against Ms. Veena as a political foil to target Mr Vijayan. “The government would predicate any decision on sound legal opinion,” he added.

The ED’s case is that CMRL, a chemical firm in which the Keralam government has a minority stake, camouflaged monthly bribes to Mr. Vijayan during 2017-2021 as retainers to Exalogic, a now-defunct software consultancy firm owned by Ms. Veena, for services allegedly not rendered.

The ED had also alleged in the report that Mr. Riyas had used his “Gulf connections” to launder a significant portion of the illicit wealth. Both leaders have denied the allegations as brazenly false and politically motivated.

Extreme prudence

A KPCC insider told that the leadership meeting cautioned extreme prudence, lest any hasty registration of a case against Mr. Vijayan expose the party at the national level to accusations of double standards and duplicity, given the party’s stringently vocal opposition to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Central government’s “subversion” of Central agencies to target political opponents, including Sonia Gandhi and the Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament, Rahul Gandhi.

Moreover, KPCC sources said the High Court and Supreme Court had rejected Congress legislator Mathew Kuzhalnadan’s plea to book Mr. Vijayan on corruption charges in the CMRL-Exalogic episode, and the UDF government should not expose itself to the CPI(M)’s allegations of judicial overreach. However, they said the government could ill-afford to ignore demands from the UDF’s rank-and-file for decisive action on the ED’s report.

Sources added that the KPCC leaders felt that any hasty move to implicate Mr. Vijayan in the case would render the UDF government vulnerable to the CPI(M) accusation of game-fixing in Keralam, especially in the wake of the controversy surrounding the rendering of Vande Mataram in full at the commencement of the Onam week celebrations flagged off by Vice-President C.P. Radhakrishnan.

The leadership meeting also appeared mindful that at least two senior UDF leaders had come on record stating that they had accepted political funding from the CMRL. The CPI(M)’s social media handles had repeatedly relied on their earlier “admissions” to put the UDF in the dock. The UDF government also appeared poised.