Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday slammed the decision of the Central government to put on hold the MP Local Area Development (MPLAD) scheme till 2022.
The Centre’s decision to appropriate MPLAD funds to create a separate purse at the national level to fight COVID-19 was an arbitrary act that undermined the spirit of federalism, he said.
Mr. Vijayan made common cause with non-National Democratic Alliance (NDA) parties, including the Congress, the Shiv Sena, the DMK, and the Trinamool, to pressurise the Centre to roll back the decision.
He pointed out that local self-government institutions were on the frontline of the battle against COVID-19. Panchayat and ward-level interventions were paramount to contain the epidemic and kick-start the economy at the grassroot level later. The MPLAD belonged to the electorate and not the Central government.
The decision of the Centre to merge the MPLAD outlay with the Consolidated Fund of India to centralise the allocation of resources to fight the epidemic would not be helpful to States, he said.
The move would invariably lead to an imbalance in the budgeting of the funds, with some lesser affected regions benefiting more than other deserving localities, the Chief Minister said.
Mr. Vijayan said he supported the Centre’s decision to cut the salary of MPs by 30%. The decision to suspend the MPLAD scheme for two years had come as a bolt out of the blue for most States, which had banked on using the resource to fight the disease.
Earlier, the CPI(M) had described the move as arbitrary and undemocratic. Other political parties, including the DMK and the Shiv Sena, had described it as an assault on parliamentary democracy and the privilege of MPs.