Yes, it is true.
For every vertex $v$ of the hypergraph $\pi$, consider the edges of the graph $G$ that run between hyperedges that intersect in $v$.
This will be a clique, which we can denote by $K_v$.
We can select any vertex of the clique for each $v$, this gives a vertex cover of size at most "$\ell$".

The linearity seems not needed.
It would imply, btw, that any two such cliques are edge-disjoint, that is, $K_v\cap K_u\cap E=\emptyset$.
Therefore in this case the edgeset of the graph, $E$, is an edge-disjoint union of cliques.