Kodiyeri slams Enforcement Directorate for targeting Isaac
Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan has said the party will legally and politically resist the Central government's move to target the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government using the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
After chairing a CPI(M) State secretariat meeting here on Friday, Mr. Balakrishnan said: “Former Finance T.M. Thomas Isaac and the Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board (KIIFB) are the latest Centre’s targets. It wants to bring KIIFB-funded development in the State to a halt in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election. It wants to deny Kerala’s outside ‘‘budget borrowings’‘ to drive its welfare-oriented infrastructure development schemes.”
Mr. Balakrishnan said KIIFB had raised ₹70,000 crore from the open financial market for modernising schools, hospitals, roads and bridges. The State had benefitted from KIIFB immensely. "Kerala is on the fast track of development. It has won international recognition for its social welfare programmes and ranks high in the quality of life index. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) cannot brook that."
It could not tolerate Kerala emerging as an oasis of development, secularism, democracy and peace in an era fraught with the threat of communal polarisation. It seeks to politically disadvantage the left with an eye on the next election.
The Congress has recently woken up to the Centre's threat. It remained silent when the ED arrested Congress leader and former Finance Minister P.A. Chidambaram and remanded him in judicial custody for 100 days. Now, when the ED reached the doorsteps of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, the Congress had jolted awake.
Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan slammed the agency's political slant in the Assembly. The Congress had abruptly reversed its policy of courting the ED to denigrate and hobble the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.
Mr. Balakrishnan said a magistrate court had directed the police to slap a criminal case against LDF convener E. P. Jayarajan for shielding Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan from a Youth Congress bid on his life on board an Indigo aircraft that landed in Thiruvananthapuram from Kannur.
The court ordered the police to book Mr. Vijayan's security officer and aide-de-camp for preventing the attack. "Is protecting the Chief Minister a crime. Such an approach required rectification. IndiGo airlines had abetted the attackers and jeopardised aviation security."
The CPI(M) was against any media ban. Former Minister K.T. Jaleel, MLA, had expressed dissatisfaction with a Gulf-based newspaper for alleged scaremongering during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The party would muster people to resist the Centre's decision to raise the GST on edibles and essential commodities.
