If there is no way out, the 'lizard trick' can always come in handy. Shed the tail, play the victim and then both distract and disarm the attacker. It is this 'lizard trick' that minister for local bodies M B Rajesh employed to middling results in the Assembly on Thursday. He was grilled by the Opposition for stifling local bodies.
Rajesh shed his tail. "We are passing through a severe fiscal crisis that has been imposed on us. We have many a time discussed in this very House the economic woes brought upon Kerala by the vindictive and vengeful attitude of the Centre. The situation persists," Rajesh said while responding to an adjournment motion moved by Congress MLA T Siddique on the growing dysfunction of local bodies.
After presenting the government as brutally mutilated by a ruthless Centre, the minister shrewdly smuggled in the hard truth. Treasury restrictions that have cut off funds to local bodies are a reality, he said. "Because of the unprecedented fiscal stress Kerala is facing since 2021, as a consequence of the Centre's discriminatory anti-federal moves, we could disburse the last installments of development fund and maintenance grant and the last three instalments of general purpose of the 2023-24 fiscal only in the last month of the fiscal, in March (2024)," Rajesh said.
He said that a last-minute and surprising insertion of a condition, that unspent funds should not be more than 10 per cent by end of the fiscal, had led to 24 local bodies, including corporations, being deprived of 15th Finance Commission funds. He was also disappointed that the Opposition was unwilling to lend a helping hand. "It is strange that the UDF is reluctant to say a word against the Centre for pushing Kerala into such a sorry state," Rajesh said.
The LDF government, in Rajesh's telling, was the lizard with a severed and writhing tail. If Rajesh had thought that the plight he has drawn would disarm and distract the UDF members, he was badly mistaken.
Opposition Leader VD Satheesan said the government could not expect the Opposition's support in the fight against the Centre if it keeps coming up with far-fetched figures of fiscal deprivation.
He said the Rs 57,000-crore loss estimate that the LDF goverment had bandied about was based on ludicrous notions. "The law has clearly said that GST compensation would end after five years. The government now says that if Kerala had received the compensation for the sixth year, it could have secured Rs 12,000 crore. This hypothetical figure is then presented as a real loss for Kerala," Satheesan said.
He also called out the government's claim that the Centre had slashed Kerala's Revenue Deficit Grant. "This is bogus. In fact, Kerala had received the highest Revenue Deficit Grant from the Centre, Rs 53,137 crore. This is paid in five instalments over five years. So if it was 13,000 crore a fiscal, it would be Rs 4,000 crore the next financial year. How can the government call this a loss when in truth these annual instalments are part of a five-year grant, which in its full is the highest sanctioned for any state government in the country," Satheesan said.
Essentially, the Opposition Leader was saying that the LDF government would not be allowed to use the Centre's policies to distract attention from the poor plight of local bodies in Kerala. Satheesan said that 30,360 development fund bills, worth Rs 656 crore, submitted by local bodies were pending. He said 40,855 maintenance grant bills worth Rs 1,135 crore were also pending, and this he said includes funds meant for people belonging to scheduled castes and tribes.
He said that the government had virtually ended the carry over mechanism by which 20 per cent of unspent funds in a fiscal is taken over to the next fiscal. "Now the carry over funds are met from the plan funds of the ongoing fiscal. This way, you are depriving local bodies of their allocation in the previous and ongoing financial years," he said.
The Opposition Leader said that the government was shrewdly and cruelly impeding the activities of local bodies. He said that whenever local bodies were disbursed funds, the government would simultaneously impose treasury curbs. "So what happens is that these local bodies have the sanction to take funds but there would be no Treasury to provide them the money," he said. He likened this plight of local bodies to a lucky man who could not enjoy the jackpot he has won.
