Kottayam: The Congress has mocked the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) and its MP from Idukki, Joyce George, for claiming credit for the amendment of a Central order exempting 3,115 square kilometres (sq km) of land from eco-sensitive area (ESA) regulations. “It's like a midwife claiming the child born to a woman she attended on,” Mathew Kuzhalnadan, state president of the All-India Professionals' Congress, said here on Saturday.

He asserted that the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change exempted the 3,115 sq km from ESA because it realised that the curbs do not hold in areas that the UPA government at the Centre, led by the Congress, exempted in 2014. “The ministry has thus endorsed the UDF arguments. Their amended order is a response to those who alleged that the draft notification (issued by the then UPA government at the Centre) was a fraud.

“The Union ministry has now exempted the 3,115 sq km on the basis of the demand made by the Oommen Chandy government to the Centre in 2014. Even the High Court had accepted the UDF government's exemption of the areas and ruled that the 3,115 sq km should be exempted from ESA curbs.

“Later the High Court issued similar orders in nearly 27 cases,” he said.

Mathew, a lawyer, pointed out that he was the one who obtained the court orders for majority of the 27 pleas. “The latest action from the Centre has come after the state queried about them for further procedures based on these judgements,” Mathew said. “People will dismiss with contempt the attempt by the LDF and the Idukki MP to claim credit for a gain that entirely belongs to the UDF,” he said.