Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State president Kummanam Rajasekharan has dismissed as baseless Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s observation that the party has evaded a discussion on development and said that the milieu is not conducive for a debate.
In reply to a Facebook post of the Chief Minister, Mr. Rajasekharan in a statement here on Saturday described Mr. Vijayan as an administrator who failed to create an atmosphere suitable for such a discussion and hence it was meaningless. It was unfortunate that Mr. Vijayan was not thinking about the situation that prompted the BJP leaders and Chief Ministers to converge in the State for the Janaraksha Yatra. If someone talks critically about Mr. Vijayan or the CPI(M), it could not be deemed as a criticism against the State.
The claim that he and the CPI(M) were responsible for all the development in the State itself was baseless. The achievements were the outcome of concerted efforts of social reformers. The CPI(M) got the chance to reap the benefits of the hard work of such reformers.
But the State had not developed any further. The onus for the present predicament was on the rival fronts that ruled the State since 1956. The State was still surviving on the returns from the sale of lottery tickets, liquor and NRI returns. Kerala was still relying on other States for all its needs, from vegetables to rice and other commodities, he said.
He welcomed Mr. Vijayan’s initiatives to make the State an investor-friendly destination. The need of the hour was not the Kerala Investment Promotion and Facilitation Act, 2017, but an attitudinal change of the CPI(M). The State still did not have significant slot in the list of States that grant industrial clearances.
The Kerala model on health was a failure. The State had reported the highest number of deaths due to dengue fever, with 1,000 in the last season and no such situation had been reported in Uttar Pradesh as per the Union Health Ministry reports, he said.
He accused Mr. Vijayan of failing to provide security to the people of the State and said that CPI(M) workers had resorted to violence and targeted the participants of the yatra. The Centre had been granting more funds compared to the previous years and that was the reason for the development activities taken up by the State government. The BJP was still open for a discussion, he said.