Communist Party of India (CPI) district unit secretary Suresh Raj has said that the opposition of the Planning Commission to the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) promised to Kerala is the latest example of the Union government’s discrimination against the State.
In a statement here on Wednesday, Mr. Raj said that despite the Prime Minister publicly announcing the IIT for the State in Kochi last month and the Union Minister for Human Resource Development’s promise in Parliament, the Planning Commission was opposing it. The Planning Commission’s stand was anti-Kerala, he said.
Arguments that both the Indian Institute of Management and an IIT could not be given to a State had no basis as many States had both of them. The Planning Commission’s stand was also owing to the failure of the State government to get the required clearance from the Union Cabinet and a political decision on it, the statement said. The Union government had taken a similar discriminatory stand on the starting of work on the Railway coach factory in Palakkad, the statement said.
The rule of the same Party at the Centre and in the State and Kerala having eight nominees in the Union government had not brought any major benefits to the State, Mr. Raj said.
