By denying Kerala its rightful share of funds, the Centre is engaged in ‘penalizing federalism’ and not ‘cooperative federalism’ that ought to have been the case, Minister for Public Works Mohammed Riyas said here on Saturday.
He was speaking at a press meet to announce pilot projects under design policy of Public Works Department and Kerala Tourism.
Centre ‘vengeful’
Mr. Riyas said that the reasons for this include the stand that the LDF Government took regarding the Uniform Civil Code and the Citizenship Amendment Act, which had provisions that were against the tenets of the Constitution. The State Government went on to pass a resolution upholding secularism — the first to do so from among all State Governments, to counter moves that threatened it.
All this resulted in the Centre turning ‘vengeful’ against the State, and it is being denied its share of funds. This is in stark contrast with the Centre extending all help to State Governments that toed its line, he added, while addressing media persons.
Progressive politics
He credited the leftist, secular and progressive politics in vogue in Kerala for the ‘failure’ of RSS and the BJP to make inroads into the State, even though the RSS had considerable number of ‘shakhas’ (units) in the State.
To a question on the politics of violence and murder that has become commonplace in Kerala, Mr. Riyas claimed that the CPI(M) lost the maximum number of activists to political violence and went on to blame among others the Congress party, for indulging in violence.
