The Central government’s decision to accord conditional clearance to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for visiting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to mobilise funds for rebuilding the flood-hit State and to defer the approval for other Ministers has put the entire itinerary in a quandary.
The Chief Minister’s Office said on Saturday that the Centre had barred Mr. Vijayan from securing assistance from the UAE government, but he could seek the support of expatriates and their organisations.
The Cabinet had decided to depute all Ministers, except Health Minister K.K. Shylaja, Education Minister C.N. Ravindranath and Forest Minister K. Raju, to tour various countries for the resource mobilisation drive, mainly from Non-Resident Keralites. But the Centre has granted approval only for Mr. Vijayan.
He would leave for the UAE on October 17 and return on October 21.
The Union government decision has given way to doubts about the other requests placed by the State to provide relief for the flood victims. Official sources said that usually when a State government seeks clearance for Ministers’ overseas tours, it would be accorded in a bunch and not separately.
Though government sources exuded the confidence that the requests for other Ministers were being processed and would be cleared within the next two or three days, it is reliably learnt that the Centre would restrict it to three or four Ministers and reject the rest. This is reported to be in line with the Central government policy against seeking assistance from other countries.
The State government’s request for raising the borrowing limit from the current 3% to 4.5% of the GSDP and a special package for the reconstruction too are pending with the Centre.
The State, reeling under a grave financial crisis, is eagerly looking forward to a positive response on all these counts. But the current decision has given way to doubts about the possibility of the Centre clearing the package as well as the plea for enhancing the borrowing limit.
Any further delay in approving the package as well as the plea for raising the borrowing limit is feared to derail the rebuilding initiatives of the State government.
