Govt for CBI probe into RMP leader murder,VS defies party line

Congress-led UDF government in Kerala today decided to seek a CBI probe into the 'conspiracy' behind the murder of RMP leader T P Chandrasekharan even as CPI(M) found itself in a bind with party veteran V S Achuthanandan backing the demand of the slain leader's wife.
Accepting the cabinet decision, Chandrasekharan's wife K K Rema, who had alleged that bigwigs of CPI(M) were involved in the conspiracy to murder her husband, called off her five-day old fast in front of the government secretariat.
Adding a new dimension to the development, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala revealed that Achuthanandan had written a letter to Chief Minister Oommen Chandy urging him to consider Rema's demand.

Chennithala said it could be taken as an endorsement of the government's stand by the LDF since the letter came from the Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly.
Though CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan expressed doubts about the authenticity of such a letter, Achuthanandan himself confirmed that he had written to the government.
"Yes I did write a letter... Let the party discuss it," the nonagenarian leader told reporters who confronted him with the question whether his act did not amount to breach of party discipline.

Vijayan, now on his "Kerala raksha march", however, said at Kottarakkara in Kollam, that the letter could be the handiwork of some of those removed from Achuthanandan's personal staff in the past by misusing his letterhead as Opposition Leader.

Earlier also, the disconnect between Achuthanandan and the CPI(M) state unit controlled by Vijayan on the issue had come to the fore.
A CPI(M) rebel, who floated a parallel Left outfit called Revolutionary Marxist Party in his home turf Onchiyam in north Kerala, Chandrasekharan was hacked to death in May 2012.
Last month, a special court sentenced 11 people, three of them local CPI(M) functionaries, to life imprisonment.
Rema had alleged that bigwigs of CPI(M) were involved in the conspiracy to murder her husband.
CPI(M) had held that ordering a fresh probe would be illegal and politically motivated.