Opposition LDF employs its own failures in power to attack UDF government

It is hard for those who led the previous LDF government to escape blame for the troubles faced by the new UDF government. Yet, while in Opposition, it will be foolish not to expect the LDF to weaponise the perceived failures of the fledgling UDF government that were originally induced by the missteps or compulsions of the LDF government.

The cut in the allocation for local bodies in V D Satheesan's Budget was the subject of the adjournment motion moved by the Opposition in the Assembly on Wednesday. Moving the motion, CPI MLA and former minister G R Anil also said that the government was not even transferring spill over money to meet the cost of ongoing projects that had begun in the last fiscal. 

It is a fact that the Chief Minister had lopped off ₹1533 crore from the money set apart for local bodies in the LDF's last budget. But to the Chief Minister's credit he had carefully prepared the ground, in other words given an excuse, before slashing local body funds in his budget.

A fortnight before he made his first Budget Speech on June 19, the CM had unveiled a Sherlockian mystery in his 'white paper': 'The Case of the Missing ₹20,500 crore'. He said that former finance minister K N Balagopal presumed without any basis that the 16th Finance Commission would award Kerala generous transfers and revenue deficit grants. 

As it turned out, the size of Balagopal's 'wild guess' was ₹20,500. "Kerala's plan size had shrunk by ₹20,500 crore. No other finance minister in Kerala had faced such a crisis," Satheesan had dramatically said.

So in his Budget Speech the CM said: "As this Government presents the revised budget, we are compelled to address a shortfall of ₹20,500 crore across these very categories—a direct fallout of the predecessor's flawed projections. It was in wilful disregard of this massive shortfall in anticipated revenue receipts that the previous government had arbitrarily fixed the State Plan Outlay at ₹35,750 crore. When we account for this staggering deficit, a proportionate reduction in the realistic Plan Outlay becomes absolutely unavoidable."

The 'proportionate reduction' Satheesan made in the play outlay is ₹5000 crore. ₹1533 crore of this was shaved off from the devolution to the local bodies. What was ₹10,183 crore in Balagopal's budget came down to ₹8655 cr in Satheesan's. 

Satheesan repeated the Sherlockian mystery on the Assembly on Wednesday, too, and said: "How am I supposed to devolve funds with an illusory plan outlay?"

The CM said that there had been proportionate cuts in plan allocations for all departments, except for SC/ST and fisheries.

Satheesan said there was yet another problem that he had inherited. "The last LDF government had not transferred the third and final instalment of ₹2150 crore to the local bodies," the Chief Minister said. "A set of people who had left office without paying ₹2150 crore to the local bodies are now cribbing that we had cut ₹1533 crore," he said.

G R Anil and later Opposition Leader Pinarayi Vijayan, in his walkout speech, argued that the third instalment was left unpaid because the model code of conduct for the Assembly elections had come into force. "We had sought the permission of the Election  Commission of India to disburse the third instalment, but were denied," Pinarayi said. 

Satheesan said that the third instalment should have been transferred in December 2025. "They did not disburse it even in January or February and waited for the election notification to be issued on March 16 to think of transferring the funds," he said, poking fun at the LDF.