Thiruvananthapuram: Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb claimed here on Tuesday that Kerala is lagging behind his state in terms of the growth rate of key development indices.
“The gross state domestic product (GSDP) growth in Tripura is 11.4% in 2019-20 while the same is 11.2% in Kerala. The growth in primary sector is 16.2% in Tripura against Kerala’s 6.19%. In MSME sector it is 14.2% in Tripura and 9.7% in Kerala,” he told reporters here. Kumar said the BJP government in Tripura was able to achieve a significant growth rate in all sectors, with the support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. When CPM was in power, the growth rate in major sectors were even poorer than Kerala, he said.
“The CPM rule in Tripura had denied the state development in all segments. They build narratives based on blatant lies. Tripura has started enjoying the benefits of development after the BJP government came into power. Left leaders in the opposition have even raised objections when our government decided to adopt NCERT syllabus in schools. One of their objection was that book sellers would suffer a huge loss if the state adopts NCERT syllabus,” he said.
Deb said he wouldn’t claim that Left politics has come to an end in Tripura. However, they are being relegated to obscurity as the state face elections one after another. “I wouldn’t say that Left politics has ended in Tripura. They still have MLAs in state assembly. But people have realised the duplicity of the Left. Earlier, the fulltime party cadres used to threaten people by claiming that they have a mechanism to know who votes for whom. If people in Tripura can understand the duplicity of comrades there, I believe people in Kerala too can,” he said.
According to Deb, it was pointless to consider LDF and UDF as two political forces since Left parties and Congress are in alliance with each other in West Bengal. “They have been practicing tactics as per which LDF and UDF loots Kerala by turn,” he said.