The United Democratic Front (UDF) further trained its guns on what it called the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government’s fiscal mismanagement by entrusting a committee it formed to bring out a White Paper on the State’s financial situation.
The UDF committee, headed by senior Congress leader V.D. Satheeshan, was appointed when the UDF ran a series of agitations against the attempts to throttle the local bodies financially and administratively.
Inaugurating the first meeting of the UDF committee, Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala said the LDF rule had pushed the State into a financial crisis in the last three years it was in power.
He expressed concern at the administrative paralysis caused by the financial crunch. Welfare activities, development work, functioning of the local bodies, rebuilding Kerala in the aftermath of the floods had been hit. The State government’s function was only to pay salaries and pensions, he said.
LDF policies
Right from day one, the LDF government’s policies had only worsened the fiscal situation in almost all sectors, be it agriculture, KSRTC, health or tax administration, Mr. Chennithala said.
This when the Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac had said he would ‘rectify the shortcomings’ in the manner in which the previous UDF government functioned, the Congress leader said.
Despite the current focus
The UDF leadership decided to go ahead with the proposal to bring out the White Paper even though the coalition’s current focus was on agitations over the alleged admission-examination-recruitment scam.
Former Planning Board vice-chairman K.M. Chandrasekhar, former Planning Board Member G. Vijayaraghavan, CMP leader C.P. John, former State Finance Commission chairman B.A. Prakash, Mr. Satheeshan, UDF legislators K.N.A. Khader, Mons Joseph, M. Ummer, P. Jayaraj and K.S. Sabarinadhan were among the main speakers at the inaugural session of the UDF committee.