Reinforcing his statement on a secret tie-up between the Congress-led UDF and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday termed the alliance as the 'Kerala Model' in politics. Vijayan said this while speaking to the media in Palakkad, just before starting his election tour in the district.

"Today this 'Kerala Model' tie-up is now spreading canards against the ruling Left government. If one looks, the Left has taken an alternate route for the overall development, which is not what these two outfits did after the Congress started with the liberalisation policies and now followed by the BJP. We have taken a different route and hence these people are spreading canards against us, but the people of Kerala have seen what has happened in the past five years under us," said Vijayan.

"Just look into the decentralisation process that the Left started with the People's Plan, it later became a model that was studied universally. We came out with an election manifesto for the previous Assembly elections and every year we came out with a progress report on what happened and now when we look back we can say that of the 600 promises that was made we could accomplish 570," added Vijayan.

Attacking the policies of the partners in the Kerala Model, Vijayan said three central public sector units are now put up for sale and the Congress never spoke a word against that because it's their policies that the BJP is taking forward.

"Look into the sale of the Thiruvananthapuram airport, when the Left strongly opposed it, the Thiruvananthapuram Congress Lok Sabha member (Shashi Tharoor) came out in support of that. Such are the policies of the Congress," said Vijayan.

Also Read:

PC Thomas-led Kerala Congress quits NDA, to merge with Joseph faction

He also pointed out how the Left government was the first to come out against the Citizen Amendment Act and "that's how the Left government goes about things and the people of Kerala know that and have seen what we have done".

On the talk of Metroman E.Sreedharan, that development has failed to take place in Kerala, Vijayan shot back by saying that none has a doubt on the technocrat's engineering abilities.

Also Read: Congress names candidates for Assembly polls in Puducherry, former CM Narayanasamy doesn't find place

"But, it has come to a stage that anyone who joins the BJP unfortunately speaks the same language of the BJP and that's what can be said of the recent utterances of Sreedharan. We will wait till the results come and then we will know," said Vijayan and concluded by saying that they will win more seats than they got in 2016.

First Published:Mar 19, 2021 1:38 PM IST