Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday said Leader of the Opposition Ramesh Chennithala and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State president K. Surendran behaved like conjoined twins. They seemed to be driven by an animus towards the government.

Both leaders could provide no empirical evidence to support their string of wild allegations of corruption against the administration.

Both persons were patently ill-advised, went by hearsay, and seemed unwilling to do their homework. They rarely checked facts before making public statements. Their attempts to put the government on the defensive by laying down a smokescreen of lies were often ludicrous.

Mr. Chennithala and Mr. Surendran had seized upon a recent media report that said the government had authorised the mining of clay on Technocity premises after taking bribe from contractors. A governmental committee had shot down a proposal by a pubic sector entity to remove the earth.

Mr. Vijayan cited several instances wherein he alleged that the two leaders had “jumped the gun in their eagerness to attack the government”. In all such situations, including the Sprinklr deal, they had to swallow their own words.

Mr. Chennithala had said the government’s decision to hire PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt Ltd smacked of corruption.

The State had contracted the agency along with two other consultants for its ambitious e-mobility project. The government had selected the consultants from a panel of companies empanelled by the Central government.

The government could not shrug off the accusations raised by the Leader of the Opposition. They warranted an answer. But by raising frivolous issues, Mr. Chennithala was squandering away precious time and resources that could be used to fight the pandemic and rescue the economy from collapse.

Former UDF Chief Ministers had used the same set of global consultants for various projects. Mr Chennithala should shed his current cadre of advisers and seek counsel from Oommen Chandy, A.K. Antony, and Manmohan Singh before making statements on matters of State.