Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 30 (TIWN) At a time when the Communist party in the country is celebrating its centenary, at its last bastion in Kerala things have reached a crucial moment after the two high-profile arrests in cases that have rocked the 'red party' and the government. Amid all this the CPI-M's highest decision making body -- the Central Committee -- is having a two-day online meeting starting Friday.

The arrests have taken place at two power centres of the party — one at the office of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, when his trusted lieutenant and senior bureaucrat M.Sivasankar was arrested, and the other is that of Bineesh Kodiyeri, the son of the state party secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.  Both of them have been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate, but in different cases, though there appears to be a close link between the accused in these cases.  The ED has named Sivasankar as the fifth accused in a case under the Prevention of the Money Laundering Act, while the others in the list of accused includes the prime accused in the gold smuggling case — Swapna Suresh, P.S. Sarith, Sandip Nair and Faizal Fareed.