The Congress has ignored the CPM candidate Jaick C Thomas's repeated call for a debate on infrastructure development in Puthuppally. Nonetheless, the party, especially candidate Chandy Oommen, has decided to take the issue of development head on at corner meetings organised as part of the campaign.
Chandy Oommen, whose initial attempts to defend Oommen Chandy's legacy sounded ill-informed, has demonstrated a new-found intent to take on the opposition in a more studied manner.
Earlier, he had said that Puthuppally had an "Institute of Virology" where COVID tests were done. Chandy was made the butt of jokes by the CPM for this claim. Former health minister P K Sreemathy expressed mock shock.
"It was recently that I heard that the National Institute of Virology was brought to Puthuppally by our former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. I was dumbstruck. It was during the first UPA government, when Anbumani Ramdoss was the union health minister, that I managed to set up Kerala's first National Virology Institute at the Alappuzha Medical College. To say that this institute is actually in Puthuppally is absurd," Sreemathy had said.
On August 23, at the start of his vehicle procession from Vennimala, Chandy set the record straight without saying so. What he had in mind was not the National Virology Institute but the Inter University Centre for Biomedical Research and Super Speciality Hospital. "It was in this research centre that we did COVID tests during the height of the pandemic," Chandy said.
When the development debate first came up, Chandy had said that the tests were done in the "Virology Institute" at Puthuppally. He amended this claim, but made it seem like he was making it for the first time. "Till the test kits were made available, this research centre had done over five-and-a-half lakh COVID tests," Chandy said.
He held up the research centre as one of his father's big contributions. "I would like to list out a couple of things my father had done for the constituency," Chandy said. "One, the School of Medical Education, SME, at Thalappady. And the other is the Inter University Centre for Biomedical Research and Super Speciality Hospital that is situated near the SME," Chandy said.
He then attempted to turn the tables on the LDF government. "Now, there is only the out-patient (OP) wing of this super speciality hospital, which was inaugurated in 2015. The in-patient hospital does not exist. The land for this has been acquired," Chandy said, and added: "Even after the requisite land has been acquired, who is standing in the way of making this super speciality hospital a reality?"
Further, he said that the CPM had opposed the SME at the time of its inauguration in 1994. "Who had shown black flags at the then education minister E T Muhamma Basheer who had arrived to inaugurate the SME," he asked. "We need answers for these questions, too," he said.
It was Kalpetta MLA T Siddique who gave Oommen Chandy's vision a broader scale. In this telling, a more inspirational light was cast on Puthuppally.
He cited some of the big infrastructure projects like Vizhinjam International Terminal, Kannur Airport and Kochi Metro and said these were realised only because of Puthuppally voters.
"Had you not voted for Oommen Chandy, none of these big projects would have come to Kerala," Siddique said. "The people of Kerala will forever be indebted to you," he added.
