Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on April 16 (Tuesday) sought to refute Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged portrayal of Kerala as a State in economic and social decline.
Speaking to reporters in Thrissur, Mr. Vijayan attempted to offer a counter-narrative to Mr. Modi’s main talking points during the latter’s whirlwind electioneering tour in Kerala on April 15.
Mr. Vijayan said NITI Aayog findings belied Mr. Modi’s grim picture of the State. “Kerala has the country’s highest physical quality of life index (PQLI) and the lowest poverty. It topped the country’s sustainable development index and several other parameters, including housing, public health, climate change mitigation and daily earnings. BJP-ruled States, including Uttar Pradesh, compared poorly”, he said.
Mr. Vijayan also refuted Mr. Modi’s claim that Kerala had suffered a legal setback in the Supreme Court when the former challenged the Centre’s decision to include off-Budget borrowings by special purpose vehicles in the State’s debt calculation.
Mr. Vijayan said the Centre applied “a different yardstick” to itself. For one, it did not include the borrowings of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), both special purpose vehicles, in the Centre’s debt limit, he said.
Mr. Vijayan said Kerala had moved the Supreme Court against the Centre’s decision to haul down the State’s borrowing limit by premising the decision on an erroneous interpretation of Article 293(3) of the Indian Constitution.
He said the Supreme Court had handed Kerala a legal victory by referring the question to a five-member Constitutional bench. Moreover, other non-BJP provincial governments had challenged the Centre’s “trespasses” on fiscal federalism, prompting the apex court court to wonder whether the Union government was “competing” with States.
Mr. Vijayan said the Central government had whittled down allocations for rural employment guarantee schemes, school education, noon meals, agriculture, farmer’s debt relief, fertilizer subsidies, and public health. At the same time, the BJP claimed to be pro-farmer, pro-women and pro-youth.
Mr. Vijayan accused the BJP of attempting to piggyback on the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government’s achievements in Kerala.
For one, the BJP tried to arm-twist Kerala into branding Life Mission houses for people with low incomes under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY). The State had spent 17,000 crore to build 4 lakh houses for the homeless poor, while the Centre’s contribution was a mere ₹2,081 crore in delayed payments, he pointed out.
He said the BJP campaigned merely on dog-whistle issues, such as UCC and CAA, to woo the votes of “the majority demographic group.” Simultaneously, it used cultural flash points to eclipse the Centre’s failure on multiple fronts.
For one, the Central government has implemented an undeclared employment freeze, including for the Railways. Jobs in the armed services were now on contract. Unemployment has skyrocketed under the BJP government, the Chief Minister said.
Mr. Vijayan said Mr. Modi’s government was patently “pro-corporate.”
“Under Modi’s watch, nationalised banks had written off ₹10 lakh crore corporate borrowings. However, the banks allowed no such considerations to small borrowers, including farmers, who were plagued by loan recovery notices,” he said.
He said Mr. Modi’s claim that the ED would return the money to those who lost it in cooperative bank scams was mere election posturing and bluster. “A legal process informs such actions; no agency or Prime Minister can do it arbitrarily or at the wave of a hand,” he said.
Mr. Vijayan said Kerala’s Department of Cooperation had ensured that wrongdoers in the Karuvannur cooperative bank episode were brought to book. Moreover, the bank was functional and had not gone bust as alleged. “It had returned ₹117 crore to depositors who wanted to withdraw their money”, he said.
‘Suresh Gopi’s graph plummeting’
Mr. Vijayan said the CPI(M) in Thrissur had not secreted any funds to hidden accounts as alleged by Mr. Modi. “The party’s money comes from levies and collections, not electoral bonds. It promptly files its tax returns. The ED and I-T department’s sabre-rattling against Thrissur’s CPI(M) will not help the BJP candidate Suresh Gopi. His graph is plummeting steeper every day. Even the BJP leadership has given up hope on Mr. Gopi,” he said.
When asked about Mr. Modi bringing up the subject of a Central investigation against a company which had contracted his daughter’s IT firm for software services, Mr. Vijayan said: “The service contract-related transactions were through bank accounts and above board. The firm has paid its IT returns promptly”, he said.
Mr. Vijayan said Kerala’s electorate would reject the Congress and the BJP for their “anti-State positions.” He said the Congress in Kerala had relegated itself to the subaltern position of being “the Sangh Parivar’s ideological echo chamber” in the State.
“Both parties have worked to scuttle Kerala’s development and undermine the State’s social welfare programmes”, he added.
