Leader of the Opposition Oommen Chandy has sought to brush aside the controversy over former minister P.K. Kunhalikutty's revelations and the allegations levelled by his relative K.A. Rauf, saying that nothing new had emerged.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday during his ‘Kerala Mochana Yatra,' Mr. Chandy said all that had been ‘revealed' by Mr. Kunhalikutty and or alleged by Mr. Rauf were matters that had already been discussed threadbare in State politics as well as the public domain, and the Court's judgment on the case had put the lid on the issue.
On the reported statement that Mr. Kunhalikutty had “misused” his ministerial powers, Mr. Chandy said there was nothing wrong in helping a person as long as the help stood within the permissibility of law. In case there was anything illegal, that could be probed and the United Democratic Front and Mr. Kunhalikutty himself had made it clear that any probe was welcome.
Downplaying reports that the controversy had been raked up with an eye on the forthcoming Assembly elections and to take the fizz out of his ‘Mochana Yatra,' Mr. Chandy said he saw no connection between any of the three.
Hospitalised
Earlier, Mr. Chandy, who was hospitalised for a brief while after doctors said he was in the grip of a pneumonia attack, said the Communist Party of India's (Marxist) way of opposing “anything and everything new” had always posed obstacles for the State's development. By the time the CPI (M) saw the positive side and took a stance accordingly, the damage would have been done.
The CPI (M)'s opposition to the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement and the Indo-US nuclear deal had boomeranged on the Left in West Bengal and Kerala during recent polls and the same trend would be repeated in the next Assembly elections as well, he said.
Kuttanad Package
Coming down heavily on the LDF for its “criminal delay” in implementing the Kuttanad Package and the completion of the tsunami rehabilitation programme in the district, Mr. Chandy said the CPI (M), which had once fought landlords and took land from them to be distributed to landless farmers, had itself returned the land to the land mafia, the latest example being the R-Block issue in Kuttanad, where 217 farmers were allegedly cheated and their plots given to the land mafia.
Demanding that the LDF government ensure that the farmers got back their land before its tenure ended, Mr. Chandy said the government's inefficiency had resulted in Kuttanad remaining a backward region, despite the long-standing paucity of funds being solved by the Union government through the Kuttanad Package.
