Kerala High Court on Monday said there was “no justification” for the repeated summonses issued to senior CPM leader and former state finance minister Thomas Isaac by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the probe into alleged violations by an infrastructure investment fund.

Similarly, there was no justification for the repeated summonses to the CEO and the joint fund manager of the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB), the court added and put on hold any issue of summons by the ED in the case for two months.

Justice V.G. Arun said that investigation by the agency was not liable to be interdicted.

The directives were issued by the court on the pleas of Isaac challenging the summonses issued to him and of the KIIFB opposing the probe into its financial transactions and the summons issued to its top officials.

The high court impleaded the Reserve Bank of India as a party in the matter and listed both pleas for further hearing on November 15.

The KIIFB has challenged the repeated summonses to its officials, including its CEO Kandathil Mathew Abraham and its joint fund manager Anie J. Thomas, and opposed the ED probe, saying that it was hampering its ability to raise funds for development projects in the state.

Isaac contended in his plea that the ED had no power to question him or ask for personal information or details just because he was the former head of the KIIFB and now its ex-officio member.

He said the ED was attempting to conduct a fishing and roving inquiry into the activities of the KIIFB and such inquiries had been time and again been deprecated by the apex court.

Isaac claimed that the summonses did not reveal the nature of the violation, if any, by him of the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (Fema) or details of the investigation in relation to which his response was being sought. PTI

The summonses are “ex-facie illegal and beyond the jurisdiction of the scope of inquiry contemplated under the FEMA since admittedly, there is no violation of any provision of the said Act”, Isaac has said in his plea.

The ED had served a notice to the senior Marxist leader last month, seeking his appearance before it on July 19. He, however, did not appear before the central agency, saying he had to attend classes at a party-run institute in the state capital.

The second notice seeking his appearance was sent by ED in the first week of August, after which he moved the high court challenging the summons.