Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal’s statement that the Centre has imposed an economic embargo on Kerala is anti-Constitutional, BJP State president K. Surendran has said.
Mr. Balagopal should understand that Kerala was only a State in the country and not a separate entity. The financial allocation for each State was decided by the Finance Commission. Yet, by claiming that Kerala was singled out, he was raising or encouraging factionalism, Mr. Surendran said here.
He added that it was to hide his financial ineptitude that Mr. Balagopal was blaming the Centre. If the State government had not turned out to be a total failure in tax collection, the State’s allocation would have been more. If at the national level, tax collection was estimated to be 74%, in Kerala, this was only 42%. Nepotism, corruption and sheer inefficiency had been holding the State back from ensuring a proper tax collection system, Mr. Surendran said.
Financial mess
He said that Mr. Balagopal was constantly coming up with erroneous arguments and false statements to blame the Centre for the State’s financial mess. Mr. Balagopal had to retract his statement about the State’s poor GST share when the Union Finance Minister gave out the figures and his campaign that the Centre had limited the State’s borrowing limits also turned out to be a myth. Now that the State government’s poor financial management had upset the usual Onam plenitude, the Finance Minister was resorting to a dangerous lie that the Centre had imposed an economic embargo on the State, Mr. Surendran alleged.
Even Transport Minister Antony Raju blamed the Centre for all that ailed the KSRTC. If the Centre had to step in at every turn to rescue the State, there was no need for even a State government, he mocked.
