Communist Party of India (Marxist) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan has said that Congress president Sonia Gandhi disgraced herself with her statements that Kerala had gone backward in development over the last five years.
Inaugurating an election rally of the Left Democratic Front's Ambalapuzha candidate, Coir and Cooperation Minister G. Sudhakaran, here on Thursday, Mr. Vijayan said Ms. Gandhi's statements on Wednesday, when she addressed meetings at Haripad, Thrissur and Kozhikode, were far from the truth.
He said she had disgraced herself by exhibiting her capability to talk as if being unaware of facts. At the same time, when she stated that Kerala had lagged in development in the last five years, she was unable to name a single Congress-ruled State anywhere in the country that had gone forward.
Mr. Vijayan said that the Congress president appeared to have forgotten that under the Left Democratic Front government, Kerala had won awards at the national level, even from the Union government, for the best performing State. “If she had remembered all that, she would not have made such mistakes,” he said.
Mr. Vijayan said that the State had registered a 2.8 per cent growth in the agriculture sector, better than all other States. Ms. Gandhi did not see this as development. Instead, her government was giving farm lands, seeds and the agriculture sector itself to multinational monopolies. The UDF poll manifesto said that farmlands would be given on lease, which would only lead to disaster.
Ms. Gandhi had also not remembered that in Kerala, loss-making public sector units made an astonishing turnaround, registering a Rs.240-crore profit this year alone and that the State had opened eight new PSUs, when across the country, PSUs were being shut down or running in heavy losses. The United Progressive Alliance, at the same time, was even selling shares of PSUs, including Navratna companies, to multinationals. The UDF manifesto in Kerala said ownership of PSUs, now with the government, would be handed over to the public. The UDF, Mr. Vijayan said, had probably forgotten that the government itself was the public. For the UDF, the public meant the private sector, he said.
Mr. Vijayan also spoke at election meetings at Aroor, Cherthala, Kuttanad, Chengannur and Kayamkulam on Thursday. He was accompanied by CPI (M) district secretary C.B. Chandrababu.
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