The budget presented by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy for the next financial year is nothing but an election-oriented one with full of hollow promises, Communist Party of India (CPI) State unit secretary Kanam Rajendran has said.
Mr. Rajendran, who was touring Pathanamthitta district leading his party’s Janakeeya Yatra, was talking to reporters at Ranni on Friday.
The CPI leader alleged that the budget allocation of Rs.500 crore towards support price for rubber growers was a gimmick to fool the farmers. Though the State had got as many as eight lakh rubber growers, the government had identified hardly 1.5 lakh rubber growers, he alleged.
He alleged that the paddy sector too witnessed a similar cheating by the United Democratic Front government. Many paddy cultivators were yet to receive the price of paddy procured, he alleged.
Mr. Rajendran alleged that various policies of the UDF government had been destroying the State’s farm sector. The Economic Survey too had found a negative growth for the State’s farm sector, he said.
He said the Janakeeya Yatra, highlighting the slogan, ‘Justice, secularism, sustainable development, and a corruption-free Kerala,’ has got very good response from the general public in all the 11 districts it had toured till Thursday.
The CPI leader said he was surprised to hear senior Congress leader A.K. Antony giving a clean chit to the Oommen Chandy government.
Ironically, it was Mr Antony who had stated two weeks ago that the people of Kerala would decide as to who should lead them for the next five years, he said.
When asked about the reports of a possible tie-up between the Communist parties and the Congress in West Bengal, Mr. Rajendran said there was no question of the CPI aligning with the Congress in Kerala and the CPI(M) too had unambiguously made its stand clear on the matter.
