Kerala Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala threatens to bring no-confidence motion against CM Pinarayi Vijayan on August 24

Kochi: Kerala's Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala on Friday (August 21) sought the resignation of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan citing rampant corruption on the pretext of COVID-19 pandemic. Chennithala said the Congress will be bringing a no-confidence motion against the government in the one-day long Assembly session on Monday (August 24).

Kerala's Leader of Opposition told ANI, "We are demanding the resignation of Kerala CM because of rampant corruption on the pretext of COVID-19 and during the last 4 years."

Notably, the Kerala High Court today dismissed a petition filed by Ramesh Chennithala seeking directions to the police not to collect call detail records (CDRs) of COVID-19 patients and persons likely infected under quarantine.

A division bench of Chief Justice S Manikumar and Justice Shaji P Chaly dismissed the petition after accepting the argument of the Kerala government, which submitted that it has been using the tower location details of COVID-19 patients for contact tracing. 

The move is highly essential for containing the spread of the pandemic and quarantining people who had first hand and primary contact with those affected, the state government said, adding that the CDRs are kept strictly confidential and used for the limited purpose of identifying the tower location. Once the places where the COVID-19 patients visited have been identified, the CDRs are immediately destroyed.

Chennithala had filed a petition seeking directions to the state police not to collect call detail records of COVID-19 patients from any service provider.

Earlier, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan had informed that the police were collecting the CDRs of COVID-19 patients for contact tracing to arrest the spread of viral disease in the state, clarifying that there will be no intrusion into the patient`s privacy during a press meeting on August 13

On Thursday, Kerala witnessed a total of 1,968 new COVID-19 cases and nine deaths due to the virus. Of the new cases, 429 were reported from Thiruvananthapuram. There are 18,123 active cases and over 52,000 coronavirus cases have been reported in the state.