The Supreme Court on Thursday granted bail to former Tamil Nadu Minister Senthil Balaji in a case related to cash-for-jobs scam. Balaji was arrested in June 2023 by the Enforcement Directorate on allegations of money laundering in the cash-for-jobs scam.
The Supreme Court had reserved its judgment in the case on August 12 flagging delay in trial. A bench of Justices Abhay Oka and Augustine George Masih allowed his bail plea considering the delay in trial. “Stringent bail provisions and delay in trial cannot go together,” Justice Oka observed while pronouncing the verdict.
With the Supreme Court pronouncing his bail, Balaji walked out from the Puzhal prison late in the evening, after 471 days of incarceration. He a surety for Rs 25 lakh as ordered by the Supreme Court.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam organising secretary R.S. Bharathi and several thousands of cadres accorded him a grand welcome. While Balaji still has a long legal battle ahead to fight the three cases filed by the ED, the cadres in his hometown Karur celebrated by bursting crackers and distributing sweets.
Who is Senthil Balaji?
Balaji was the minister for electricity, excise and prohibition in the M.K. Stalin government. Hailing from Karur, he is considered to be the face of the DMK in western Tamil Nadu. A master strategist, Balaji was behind the DMK’s idea of appointing polling agents for the party, ahead of the 2024 polls, across the state. The work to appoint the polling agents began as early as January 2023. Balaji’s idea of appointing the agents and training them to do election work on the ground got him high in the line among the seniors in the party.
Senthil Balaji was once the blue-eyed boy of Jayalalithaa, during her term as chief minister from 2011 to 2016. He was the transport minister in her cabinet. It was the time when Jayalalithaa was on a spree promoting the brand ‘Amma.’ She launched Amma Unavagams aka Amma eateries, Amma salt and Amma water. As the transport minister, Balaji recommended that the Amma water be packed in pet bottles and sold in all the government bus stations. He worked on designing a water bottle that will be easy to carry for the travellers. This got him close to Jayalalithaa.
However, Balaji fell from the good books of Jayalalithaa following allegations of corruption and intra-party politics. In 2016, the assembly election in the Aravakurichi constituency was countermanded allegedly due to cash for votes. But when Jayalalithaa was hospitalised, Balaji won from the same Aravakurichi constituency only to go with T.T.V. Dhinakaran who had walked out of AIADMK against Edappadi Palanisami. Later in 2018, when Dhinakaran launched his own party, Balaji went to join the DMK under M.K. Stalin.
The case and why was he arrested?
Balaji was arrested by the ED after a daylong closed-door enquiry and searches in his official residence, on June 14, 2023. Balaji is accused in a money laundering case involving a cash-for-jobs scam during his tenure as the transport minister in Jayalalithaa’s cabinet.
He is accused of working out a scheme with his personal assistants and brother Ashok Kumar to collect money from job seekers for the posts of drivers, conductors and other posts in the Tamil Nadu transport department when he was the minister. He is accused of taking several crores of money for offering the jobs. The ED has also said that he had a deposit of Rs1.34 crore in his bank account from 2013 and 2021. While Balaji argued that the money was his MLA salary and agricultural income, the ED allegedly attributed the money to proceeds of crime.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who appeared for ED in the Supreme Court, earlier argued that Rs. 1.34 crore in cash deposits had no connection to his MLA salary or agricultural income as MLA salary is usually deposited by the government directly into the bank account. The ED also said that a pen drive seized during the search had a file named “csac.xlsx" with the details of the amounts allegedly received through the job scam.
However, in the past few months, while hearing the bail plea, the Supreme Court had raised questions about the proceeding with the trial in the PMLA case without the completion of the trial in the predicate offence. According to the ED, the predicate offence involves more than 2,000 accused. The Court observed that the ED must either rely on a complete trial of all three predicate offences in the money laundering case against Balaji or let go of some of the cases.
Stalin’s praise for Balaji
As soon as the Supreme Court pronounced its verdict, Chief Minister M.K. Stalin, in his message on social media platform X hailed Balaji as a martyr. “Even during the Emergency, the duration of imprisonment was not this long... You have made a huge sacrifice and have emerged even stronger, though they tried to weaken you. I welcome you,” he wrote, before leaving for Delhi to call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to seek financial assistance for various schemes in Tamil Nadu. Stalin described the Supreme Court’s decision to release the former minister “a triumph over a prolonged political conspiracy designed to crush his spirit”.
What next for Balaji?
Balaji is likely to be re-inducted into the Tamil Nadu cabinet soon. Sources say that Stalin, for the past two months had put on hold his cabinet reshuffle plans awaiting Balaji's release. Two days ago, during an event in Chennai, on a question on cabinet reshuffle and Udhayanidhi Stalin’s elevation as deputy chief minister, he hinted saying, “There will be change and no disappointments”. In fact, the party insiders say that he will discuss about cabinet reshuffle, about Udhayanidhi and Balaji, during his meeting with Modi. Incidentally, the electricity and excise and prohibition portfolios once held by Balaji have been allotted as additional portfolios with Finance Minister Thangam Thennarasu and Housing Minister P. Muthusamy.
Sources say that the state government had already sought time with the governor for a swearing-in ceremony on Monday. But the governor had reportedly not obliged. So the government has proposed October 2 for swearing-in.