Bengaluru: The Kerala unit of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday expelled R.S. Vinod, its cooperative cell convenor and Yuva Morcha leader, whose name has figured in a bribery scandal.

On Wednesday, regional channel Asianet News had reported that an internal BJP panel has named Vinod and state general secretary M.T. Rajesh in a bribery case. In two separate incidents, two private medical colleges had paid bribes to the two leaders to get Medical Council of India (MCI) recognition, said the channel, quoting the final report of the probe panel.

BJP is suspending Vinod from its primary membership with immediate effect, state BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan said.

“The allegations are serious. It has hit the anti-corruption image of the party and cannot be pardoned," said a statement from Rajasekharan to media.

Earlier in the day, Rajasekharan had tried to distance the party from the allegations. He agreed with the news report about the panel, saying it was formed after R. Shaji, chairman of one of the two medical colleges in question, approached BJP’s central leaders over bribery allegations against Vinod. But he declined to discuss the probe’s findings.

The Asianet report had said Shaji claimed before the panel of having paid Rs5.60 crore as bribe to Vinod to secure the affiliation, and Vinod admitted to receiving the same. It added that Vinod failed to secure the promise affiliation for Shaji, which made Shaji approach the central leadership. Both Shaji and Vinod have been unavailable for comment since the news broke on Wednesday.

The panel, according to Asianet, said Ramesh was paid a ₹ 5.6 crore bribe by another medical college in Palakkad district to get MCI recognition. But Ramesh refuting the allegations, saying he cannot have secured any benefit even for a nursery school let alone affiliation for a medical college.

In Kerala, the matter has also turned the spotlight on the internal bickering within the BJP-led National Democratic Front. The complainant Shaji is close to the BJP ally Bharatiya Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS) and was its candidate in Varkala constituency in last year’s assembly election. The confidential complaint damaging BJP leaders comes at a time when the alliance is at a crossroads, with the BDJS repeatedly complaining about not receiving certain central government positions promised by the BJP. This has raised speculation within the BJP of whether the news was leaked to the media by the BDJS camp.

The controversy has hit the party just when it was carrying on with a campaign against black money and corruption following the demonetisation of high-value currency notes by the BJP-led central government.

The news has also become ammunition for the BJP’s rivals— the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) parliamentarian M.B. Rajesh raised the issue in Lok Sabha on Thursday, while opposition leader from Congress Ramesh Chennithala demanded a probe by Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into the matter.

Following the corruption scandal, BJP has postponed its core committee meeting, which was supposed to be held on Friday, to Sunday.

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