A joint fight against the Centre to protect the federal rights of States. This was the message sent across by Chief Ministers of two non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ruled States, Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan and Tamil Nadu’s M.K. Stalin, as they shared the stage at a seminar on ‘Centre-State relations’ organised as part of the 23rd party congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] here on Saturday.
The event had been news for the past few days, mainly due to the participation of Mr. Stalin, and the Congress party’s attempts to block its former Union Minister K.V. Thomas from attending it.
Opening the seminar, Mr. Vijayan said the BJP had been aggressively pursuing the neo-liberal policies initiated by the Congress. Surcharges and cess now amount to 15% of the Centre’s revenue receipts. However, these were not shared with the States. Financial freedom of States was being restricted.
A united front had to be put up by the States to get long-pending Goods and Services Tax (GST) arrears sanctioned by the Centre, that too when the judiciary was about to be approached.
“With the unequal Centre-State relations that exist today, Kerala has turned out to be one of the worst-affected ones. Despite our population being 2.59% of the country’s population, we are only allowed 1.92% share in the revenue under the 15th Finance Commission. It has come down from 2.5% during the 14th Finance Commission. Sectoral Specific Grant of ₹2,412 crore and State Specific Grant of ₹1,100 crore recommended by the 15th Finance Commission are yet to be granted,” Mr. Vijayan said. He alleged that the Centre was even trying to topple some of the development projects that we have taken up, such as the SilverLine semi-high-speed railway project.
Mr. Stalin got a huge round of applause as he began his speech in Malayalam, detailing the cultural bond between Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and the political comradeship between the Dravidian parties and Communist parties. He praised Mr. Vijayan’s governance record. Later, coming down on the Centre’s attempts to weaken the powers of States, he alleged that such a situation had not happened even during the British period. Mr. Stalin said that strong States were required for a strong Centre and a strong nation, and called for a joint fight to preserve their rights.
Prof. Thomas, who defied his party’s diktats to attend the seminar, said that politics should not come in the way of development projects. Supporting the SilverLine project, he recalled how MPs from Kerala had put up a joined fight for the Kochi Metro rail project. Accusing the Union government of misusing Governors and Central agencies to harass non-BJP State governments, Prof. Thomas said that States such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu were denied their due in the fight against the pandemic too.
