A crucial meeting of the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) State committee on Friday deferred the decision to induct Kerala Congress (B) leader K.B. Ganesh Kumar and Kadannappally Ramachandran of the Congress (S) into the Pinarayi Vijayan Cabinet till December.
LDF convener E.P. Jayarajan attributed the delay to the government’s mass contact programme commencing on November 18. As per a 2021 agreement, the MLAs were to replace Transport Minister Antony Raju of the Democratic Kerala (Congress) and Ports Minister Ahammad Devarkovil of the Indian National League on November 25.
Hopes dashed
The LDF had promised Cabinet berths to four allies with single MLAs in the Assembly on a two-and-a-half-year sharing-term basis ending in November. Mr. Jayarajan said the ruling alliance would honour the 2021 commitment. Nevertheless, he dashed the hopes of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and Revolutionary Socialist Party (Leninist), both single MLA outfits, by stating that the LDF was hard-pressed to accommodate the aspirations of all allies for a Cabinet seat.
The LDF also decided to take the fight over the Centre’s “strangulation of State finances, welfare and development” to New Delhi. Mr. Vijayan, Ministers, MLAs, and MPs would stage a sit-in in the national capital in January to spotlight the Centre’s “transgressions on fiscal and administrative federalism.” It tasked Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal with touring non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled States to cobble together a national platform against the Centre’s “disregard” for provincial governments.
For rubber farmers
The LDF also moved to make significant political inroads into the traditionally pro-United Democratic Front (UDF) rubber-growing belts in central and north Kerala. Mr. Jayarajan said the LDF would enlist the support of all stakeholders, including the Church, to form a common platform to fight for the welfare of rubber farmers, including to pressurise major tyre companies into paying the ₹1,662 crore awarded by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) to cultivators in compensation for the unfair trade practices of the conglomerates.
Mr. Jayarajan opened a new front against Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan by announcing that settler farmers in the hilly regions of the State would lay siege to the Raj Bhavan to pressurise him into signing the Land Assignment Act that would give ownership rights of the land they cultivated and their homesteads.
