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Thiruvananthapuram, Oct 31 (IANS) Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s pre-poll welfare announcements and declaration of the state government being “free from extreme poverty” have drawn sharp criticism from both the Congress-led UDF and the BJP, which have accused the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) of misleading the public with “fabricated claims” and “poll-time drama”.
Opposition leader VD Satheesan on Friday alleged that the LDF government was “building palaces with false data” to project a good picture ahead of the 2025 local body elections.
Satheesan said, “Eliminating extreme poverty is a noble goal, but what the government is doing now is statistical fraud. It is a fraud on the people.”
He pointed out that 4.5 lakh families in Kerala were identified as extremely poor in the LDF’s 2021 election manifesto, yet the government’s latest list includes only 64,000 families.
“What happened to the remaining families? By what sleight of hand did the numbers reduce so much?” The new list, he asked, was prepared without consultation with the state planning board or statistical departments.
Satheesan accused the government of exploiting the poor for political gains.
He urged artistes and celebrities to stay away from the government’s “poverty-free Kerala” programme, saying, “The poor were ignored for four and a half years and now they are being used for publicity. This is pure election drama.”
Expressing similar sentiments, Kerala BJP president Rajeev Chandrasekhar launched a scathing attack on Chief Minister Vijayan, questioning how the government plans to fulfill its promises when the state is “burdened with a debt of Rs 6 lakh crore”.
“After nine and a half years in office, he suddenly remembered the poor, announced ‘new’ schemes, which were already listed in the 2021 CPI(M) manifesto, but were never implemented,” Chandrashekhar said in a social media post, comparing Vijayan’s rule with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “track record of delivery from day one to day 11”.
He alleged that Kerala’s economy was being run like a “Ponzi scheme”, with funds from pension, health and housing projects being used to cover interest payments.
Chandrashekhar said, “Drama, PR and corruption do not create prosperity – they only fool people.”
A special session of the Kerala Assembly has been called on Saturday to mark the “poverty-free” declaration. Satheesan said the UDF parliamentary panel would meet to decide its course of action on the matter.
In the evening, Chief Minister Vijayan will hold a public function to officially announce the announcement, where film icons Mammootty, Mohanlal and Kamal Haasan are expected to share the stage with him.
–IANS
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