Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in a veiled but sharp reference to the Comptroller and Auditor General, said that certain people with "sadistic" tendencies were behind the attempts to somehow destroy and malign Kerala Infrastructure Investment Fund Board. "These are the kind of people who feel a kind of sadistic pleasure if Kerala regresses even a inch," the chief minister said at the Chancellor's Award presentation held at the Raj Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday.
The CM was responding to the latest CAG report on Kerala Finances that found serious constitutional issues in the functioning of KIIFB. The CAG had said that KIIFB's debts did not have Legislative approval and wanted the loans taken by the Board to be included in the Budget documents. It was the second time in a year that the CAG had dismissed the KIIFB as unconstitutional.
The chief minister said that Kerala was facing a serious resource crunch. "We are not rich in resources. There are weaknesses. But if we fail to strengthen various sectors, including education, citing weak resources we would be doing an injustice to the future generations," he said, explaining the rationale behind KIIFB.
"We cannot progress on the strength of our budgetary resources alone. For this, we will have to take alternative paths. Our general education sector was strengthened only when KIIFB resources supplemented government money. We are now reaping the benefits of such a move. We now have to use the KIIFB route to augment our higher education sector," he said.
The chief minister hinted that KIIFB resources were necessary to improve the faculty and infrastructure facilities like labs and libraries in the higher education sector.
Earlier, KIIFB too had come out strongly against the CAG report, which was tabled in the Assembly on November 11. It rejected the CAG argument that it was resorting to off-budget borrowings. KIIFB said that the amount the government sets apart annually - 50% of motor vehicle tax and the whole of petrol cess - would be enough to pay off its debts.
It also questioned the CAG contention that KIIFB depended fully on government funds. According to KIIFB, at least 25% of its projects, including Transgrid and Kerala Optic Fibre network (K-FON), were revenue-generating ones. It was also stated that KIIFB was run on an asset-liability management software that would never allow its liabilities to ever exceed its income.
