My election campaign started from Manjeswaram. Children did not come there to kiss me. But, Venugopalan, a native of Uduma who has lost control of his legs, crawled up to me and shared his woes. The cause of his misery was that he had not got disability pension for 10 months.
This incident came to my mind when I read about chief minister Oommen Chandy’s loud claims about welfare pension and the numbers he reeled off. The chief minister, who juggles numbers, must reveal how many people in Kerala have not got pension for six months. The chief minister won’t be able to say that, because, if he does, those who haven’t got pension will come out with their evidence.
It is foolish to believe that five years of maladministration can be covered up by publishing the data of money spent from the chief minister’s distress relief fund or the Karunya fund.
How many farmers committed suicide in the five years before the LDF government took office in 2006? How many farmers committed suicide in the five years we were in power? The LDF government stopped suicide by farmers. Their debts were written off. The support price for paddy was increased. Again, when this UDF government took office, bad times returned for farmers. Once again suicides by farmers were reported in the state.
During the term of the previous LDF government, was any exam conducted in a disorderly fashion? The previous UDF government tried to surrender the education sector to monopolies like Microsoft. Malpractices were plenty in the class 10 IT exam.
The government itself protected the haughty officials who toyed with the future of more than five lakh students by destroying the credibility of the SSLC examination. The next LDF government re-established the faith in the class 10 board exam. IT education was totally based on open source software. And the sale of education was stopped. This government again destroyed all these achievements.
The people of Kerala know how many acres of public land were given away by this government to their well-wishers, land which could have been distributed to adivasis. They also know what kind of remarks the courts had made against the government on that issue. What did this government do to provide land and homes to dalits and adivasis?
In 2006, when the LDF government took office, 50,000 people were given land to build homes through the “Bhoorahitharillatha Keralam” scheme. The government gave aid to the homeless to build houses. It took an uncompromising stance against the land mafia. In Munnar alone, more than 12,000 acres of encroached land were reclaimed. Shouldn’t this government have given the number of people who were given land and homes?
I remember the ban on appointments imposed by the UDF government, which came to power with the promise of giving employment to 15 lakh people. It will be better if this government reveals how many people it gave jobs to.
The LDF government reopened 39 industrial establishments that were closed when it came to power. It turned around loss-making public sector undertakings. The list of public sector undertakings that were reopened in the past five years is not available. Nor is the data on their profits.
Karunya lottery is the result of the LDF government’s efforts. Unfairly taking credit for driving away inter-state lottery mafia is not enough. People remember how many times and in which all cases Congress leaders, including Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Nalini Chidambaram, argued on behalf of inter-state lotteries in the Kerala high court. It was the LDF government which argued and won cases against the lottery mafia. Was it Oommen Chandy who amended the Tax on Lotteries Act and expelled inter-state lotteries by not collecting advance tax from them? In the end, only after it was established that only Kerala state lottery will be allowed to operate in Kerala did the benevolence of Oommen Chandy and K.M. Mani began to flow. But they have to say one more thing: how many crores of rupees from Karunya lottery were rerouted to meet other expenses?
It was the LDF government which redrafted the SmartCity contract without giving Infopark to a Dubai company, which was the deal made during the term of the previous UDF government. The LDF government left office only after completing the development of the second stage of that Infopark. In the past five years, how many people have been given jobs in the Infopark? Can you name an IT park started in Kerala by the UDF government?
The LDF government had promulgated a law in 2008 against land-filling in paddy fields and wetlands. I am not asking how much land was protected on the basis of that law in the past five years. But the people of Kerala have learned from newspapers and other media the list of exemptions granted from that law.
The UDF is campaigning as if the Oommen Chandy government had prohibited the sale of liquor. What did they actually do ? All they did was to give up some places to sell liquor. Didn’t the sale of liquor increase as a result?
Oommen Chandy was at ease after inaugurating the Vizhinjam project, which was written away to Adani; the Metro, stands like a skeleton in Kochi city; not even a single aircraft has landed at the Kannur airport; SmartCity has not attracted even a single international IT company; and not even a brick other than the foundation stone has been laid at the coach factory. When Oommen Chandy finds himself without any weapon to face the election after all the scams and corruption, it is good to hope in vain that he can escape by publishing the data of benevolence showered from the distress relief fund. But it will be better if he realises that people are not fools.
