The LDF State committee, which met here on Monday, decided to intensify the agitation against Chief Minister Oommen Chandy demanding his resignation on the solar scam issue.
Two campaign rallies will tour the northern and southern parts of the State from November 1 to 13 to highlight the demand. This will be followed by a siege of the Chief Minister’s official residence, Cliff House, in Thiruvananthapuram from December 9, LDF convener Vaikom Viswan told the media after the meeting.
The northern leg of the campaign led by CPI(M) leader Kodiyeri Balakrishnan will start from Uppala in Kasaragod and cover Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, Palakkad and Thrissur; while the southern leg with CPI leader C. Divakaran as captain will begin from Ernakulam and tour Idukki, Pathanamthitta, Kottayam, Alappuzha and Kollam before culminating at Thiruvananthapuram. Mr. Viswan said the LDF State committee would meet again on November 18 to finalise the modalities of the Cliff House siege.
‘Siege no failure’
Responding to questions, he said the LDF siege of the Secretariat had not been a failure as it was made out to be. “The government was forced to declare a holiday for the Secretariat for two days and announce a judicial probe into the solar scam. It is another matter that the government later backtracked on its commitment on the inquiry,” he said.
The LDF committee adopted a resolution urging the government to allay the concerns of the people before implementing the recommendations of the Kasturirangan committee on the protection of the Western Ghats. Observing that farmers in Idukki, Wayanad, Pathanamthita and Kottayam were alarmed over the move to declare large tracts of land as protected areas, Mr. Viswan said the government had neither made a scientific assessment of the recommendations of both the Madhav Gadgil panel and the Kasturirangan committee, nor consulted stakeholders, including farmers, civil society organisations and political parties.
