His two days at Puthuppally, on August 24 and August 30, had made it clear that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will not utter a word about the statutory body, Income Tax Interim Settlement Board, which had concluded that his daughter had taken no-sweat money from a controversial mining company.
Still, like on August 30, the Chief Minister did speak of a five-year-old order of another national-level statutory body, Competition Commission of India (CCI), during his final leg of campaign in Puthuppally on Friday. He brought up the CCI to argue that the Congress ignored rubber farmers but was sensitive to the needs of tyre companies.
The CCI, in its August 2018 order, had imposed a collective penalty of Rs 1788 crore on five tyre companies for coming together to arbitrarily increase tyre prices, a process the CCI called "cartelisation".
"Will the Congress dare to demand that the penalty fixed by the CCI should be collected from these tyre companies and handed over to the farmers these companies had been exploiting," the Chief Minister said while speaking at Mattakkara-Manal Junction at Puthuppally. Later, he spoke at Pampady and Vakathanam.
Fact is, when the tyre companies approached the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) against the order, the CCI was asked to review the order, especially the extent of the fine. The issue is now under the consideration of the Supreme Court.
In Veena Vijayan's case, no one has challenged the order of the Interim Settlement Board.
Except for this mention of a statutory body, Vijayan went nowhere close to the charges swirling around him and his family. Other speakers at the event termed these allegations fabricated. The Chief Minister did not even bother to call it a lie. He stuck to his pet election theme of a BJP-Congress cabal to destroy Kerala.
What can turn out to be a political masterstroke is the Chief Minister's attempt to attribute the unfortunate plight rubber farmers to what he termed the Congress-BJP "unity of purpose". No livelihood issue in Puthuppally could whip up greater passion than the plight of rubber farmers.
He said it was the Indo-ASEAN trade pact, inked during the Manmohan Singh tenure, that led to the destruction of the rubber sector. "The Left had forewarned that this would precipitate a massive crisis. But we were ignored. Instead, the Congress spoke about the huge gains the pact would bring in," Vijayan said. "In the end, our rubber farmers bore the brunt. Till now they would have suffered losses of more than Rs 50,000 crore."
He wanted to know whether the Congress would accept their mistake. "At a time when the farmers suffer so much, will the Congress deign to concede that they had indeed made a mistake? Now the BJP is in power. Will the Congress demand a review of the ASEAN agreement," he said.
Like in his earlier stump speeches in Puthuppally, the Chief Minister said the BJP and the Congress were working together to scuttle Kerala 's development. He said the Centre was squeezing Kerala's fiscal space. "But the Congress is not willing raise a finger against such discrimination," he said.
The Chief Minister alleged that the UDF MLAs refused to meet the union Finance Minister to convey Kerala's concerns. "At the meeting I called, they were in agreement. But in practice, they refused to cooperate. Forget meeting the Finance Minister, they did not even sign on the state's memorandum," the Chief Minister said, and hurled a set of rhetorical posers: "What is preventing the Congress from conveying Kerala's grievances to the Centre? Why are they not willing to raise even a whimper of a protest? Why have they adopted such a stand?"
