Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 14 Terming CPI-M state secretary M.V. Govindan as a liar, Revolutionary Socialist Party leader and Lok Sabha MP N.K. Premachandran on Monday took strong exception on his statement that the Congress-led UDF MPs did not join the Left lawmakers to meet Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to raise the matter that the Centre is sidelining Kerala.
On Monday, firing the first salvo, Govindan said that the Centre is now engaged in a financial blockade on state of Kerala by choking the ways of raising funds, whereas the Congress-led UDF after first agreeing to join the Left lawmakers to meet Sitharaman, backed out at the last moment.
“What Govindan is saying is blatant lies. We were informed that they are planning to take all the law makers from Kerala to meet Sitharaman. We said we will have to discuss it and asked them for a copy of the memorandum. That was all what happened and after that we never heard from them. And now they say we did not join, it’s totally false and baseless,” said Premachandran, adding that the handling of the state finances by the Vijayan government is callous and has messed up everything as they have no clue of what to do.
Govindan slammed the Centre for choking Kerala with the present Left government’s borrowings.
“The revenue deficit grant given annually has been slashed drastically from Rs 19,000 crore to Rs 13,000 crore and this time it’s a mere Rs 4,000 crore. Likewise in the past, state was allowed to borrow 5 per cent of the state GDP and now it has been restricted to 3 per cent. While the Centre does which are also supposed to borrow only that, but their borrowings have touched 6.5 per cent. Similarly the same things has been done to GST compensation share due to Kerala. We wanted all this to be highlighted to the Centre, but the UDF did not come,” said Govindan.
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