Kannur : Of the crores of BJP’s havala money brought into the state for elections, Rs 10 crore was embezzled in the name of “Janmabhumi Fund”. The party had decided to allocate Rs 10 lakh toward newspaper campaign in each of 6 constituencies contested by BJP. And although Janmabhumi came out with supplements in this regard, all it received was petty sum.
Massive money running into crores was sent from the centre excluding sums for “Janmabhumi Fund” – all of which were handled by RSS leaders in the state. RSS leader in charge of organising, was assigned responsibility of handling the havala consignment. After due consultations with RSS leadership, chunks from that were funneled at secret locations. Funds that state president K Surendran handled comprised sums from sources other than the RSS-routed havala money. Some of Surendran’s black money transactions eventually became exposed in Bathery and Manjeswaram. Incidentaly, Dharmarajan, indicted in the Kodakkara robbery case, functioned as illicit money courier for both RSS and K Surendran.
Ever since BJP took to power at centre in 2014, there has been havala funding for each of its election campaigns. Only that, a large chunk of these funds never actually get used for election purposes. Of the election funds for 2016 Assembly elections, Rs 3 crore was put away into “Kannur Peeditha Sahaya Nidhi(Aid For Abuse Victims)” . However, victims of abuse never really got any worthwhile aid out of that. Interestingly, BJP a history of staging Kodakkara-model robberies. During Lok Sabha elections of 2019, Rs 1.60 crores was looted in Salem. However, unlike the Kodakkara incident, complaint of robbery was never lodged with police – the reason why that dubious incident passed off without publicity.
