Newsmaker | Under ED scanner, who is Pinarayi Vijayan’s daughter and why her company is in focus again

The Enforcement Directorate’s radar is now on Veena Vijayan, the daughter of Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

On Wednesday, the ED initiated a probe into an alleged illegal payment scandal involving Veena, registering the case based on a complaint from Shone George, a member of the Kottayam district panchayat and son of senior politician P C George, who recently joined the BJP.

He moved the ED seeking a probe into Veena’s information technology firm, the Exalogic Solutions Private Limited.

Veena has been under the scanner of various central government agencies after an Income Tax (IT) department report in 2023, pertaining to the Kochi-based Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited (CMRL), stated that firm allegedly made “illegal payment” of Rs 1.72 crore to Exalogic Solutions Private Limited, over three years from 2018-19, even though the latter did not provide it any service.

Veena had been in the eye of the storm since her engineering days, being drawn into political conversations in Kerala.

Vijayan’s opponents had targeted him when Veena was studying in a private engineering college in Tamil Nadu in early 2000s, pointing to the CPI(M)’s opposition to self-financing private colleges in Kerala in those days. Later, her choice of Bengaluru for establishing Exalogic was also criticised, given the CPI(M)-led Left’s bids to promote Kerala as a major IT destination.

Veena’s career in the IT sector has been in the limelight when she joined the RP Techsoft International — an IT venture under the Middle East-based R P Group promoted by billionaire Ravi Pillai — as the CEO in Thiruvananthapuram in 2012, prior to which she had a stint with the IT firm Oracle for a few years.

Veena founded her firm after stepping down from the RP