CPM-led cooperative hospital's plan to tap Nileshwar municipality for Rs 1 crore stillborn

Kasaragod: A CPM-controlled cooperative hospital's proposal to secure Rs 1 crore from CPM-controlled Nileshwar municipality was stillborn.

Anticipating vehement protests from the UDF councillors in Tuesday's council meeting, Nileshwar chairperson T V Shantha did not even read out the proposal but said she was setting aside agenda no. 15th.

When UDF parliamentary party leader E Shajeer sought an explanation for the decision, the chairperson said she had the right to include and drop any proposal from the council agenda.

This irked the UDF councillors and they staged a loud protest. IUML councillor Rafeek Kottapuram demanded that the agenda to give money to CPM-controlled Thejaswini Cooperative Hospital in Nileshwar should be scrapped and not just set aside.

The nine UDF councillors then submitted a dissent note to the chairperson and the secretary of the municipality.

The LDF could have ramrodded the proposal through the council considering 21 of the 32 councillors belong to the Left camp. But the finances of the municipality are in bad shape and the UDF's protest gave the LDF a perfect cover to back off gracefully. The council also has an SDPI member and a Congress rebel.

The BJP, which does not have a member in the council, took out a protest march against the proposal in Nileshwar town around 11.30 am on Tuesday. It also gave a letter to the municipal secretary in the morning to drop the proposal from the agenda.

In the afternoon, the CPM's steering committee met and decided not to press with the proposal, said sources.

In May 2022, the LDF government accepted a rate card from the cooperative hospital to raise Rs 3.6 crore from the local bodies in Hosdurg and Vellarikundu taluk of Kasaragod. The government then brought out a special order granting permission to the local bodies to invest in Thejaswini Hospital, with the consent of the respective boards/ council, and with the condition that the money was from their 'own fund'.

The CPM-led government's out-of-the-way financial help to Thejaswini Cooperative Hospital comes against the backdrop of the party's mismanagement of Karuvannur Service Cooperative Bank.