Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Credit: PTI Photos
Thiruvananthapuram: The left-front government in Kerala led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan organised a day-long fasting in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday accusing the Centre of trying to sabotage Kerala's development by denying due financial shares. This comes a day after Union Home Minister and BJP leader Amit Shah said that the BJP aims at comprehensive development of Kerala after coming to power in the state.
Vijayan alleged that the BJP government at the Centre is showing financial discrimination towards Kerala and trying to economically strangulate the state by flouting the Constitutional rights of the state. Even as the state was entitled to receive Rs 12,000 crore during this January–March period, the Centre denied Rs 5,900 crore, he said.
"The Centre reduced the borrowing limits by Rs 3,323 crore. Assistance under various centrally-sponsored schemes were being withheld insisting on branding. It was in such a situation that the state was compelled to stage such a stir against the Centre," Vijayan said while inaugurating the sit-in at the Martyrs Memorial in the city.
He also flayed that the opposition Congress-led United Democratic Front was keeping off from the protest against the Centre over a key issue of the state.
Countering Vijayan, BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the NDA government gave Rs 3.2 lakh crore, which was five times higher than the allocations by the Congress-led UPA government that preceded. The BJP is ready for an open debate over the issue, he said.
Opposition leader V D Satheesan of the Congress alleged that the stir by the Vijayan government against the Centre was only an attempt to mislead the people after "entering into unholy nexus with the BJP".
"The CPM government has been succumbing to the interests of the BJP government at the Centre by agreeing to their conditions for financial assistance. They are trying to mislead the people by staging a stir here. Hence, the Congress won't join it," Satheesan said.