Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 4 : The Kerala Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution urging the central government to stop its alleged “neglect towards the state and to accept its rightful demands”.
The resolution moved by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was passed by the House in the absence of the Congress-led UDF opposition.
The CM, while reading out the resolution in the Assembly, said that the Union government was “neglecting” Kerala’s needs and was “discriminating” against it.
Vijayan said that no country can stand tall by weakening its states, but the central government was not giving any consideration to many of the reasonable demands put forward by Kerala in the last few years.
He said this was evident from the fact that there was no mention in the Union Budget about setting up an AIIMS or implementing a high-speed rail corridor in Kerala, both of which are needed in the state.
The CM further said that Kerala was at the forefront in implementing the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), but its conversion to the VB-G RAM-G scheme will cause a loss of around Rs 3,800 crore to the state.
“It is a major setback for Kerala. In addition to this, the allocation for the rural employment scheme in the Union Budget for 2026-27 has been reduced from the earlier Rs 88,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore.
“The cut of Rs 58,000 crore in the national level allocation for the scheme, which Kerala is laudably implementing, will seriously affect the state,” he said.
The CM also referred to the state government’s repeated requests to provide Viability Gap Funding (VGF) as a grant for the Vizhinjam port project and said that the Centre was only providing the VGF as a loan which has to be repaid.
“The union government, which has granted VGF as a grant to many other states, has adopted a completely discriminatory approach in granting VGF to the Vizhinjam port,” he contended.
He also accused the Union government of adopting an “inhuman approach” towards Kerala with regard to providing the necessary financial assistance for the rehabilitation of the disaster-hit areas of Wayanad.
“The central government has not only refused to provide the compensation the state deserves for the efforts to recover from the Mundakkai-Chooralmala disaster, but has also repealed the section on loan waiver for disaster victims through an amendment to the National Disaster Management Act,” the CM said.
He said that the Centre was taking an approach of financially restricting Kerala which is “moving forward with a sense of direction by giving equal importance to infrastructure development and welfare activities”.
Vijayan said that the central government was undermining welfare activities and infrastructure development initiatives in the last phase of the financial year in a continuation of its “vindictive” approach towards the state.
“This House expresses the strong protest of the people of Kerala against the neglect and discrimination of the central government, which is reducing the financial resources of the state, withholding the central share for centrally sponsored projects and not giving any consideration to Kerala in terms of physical infrastructure development,” the CM said.
He urged the Centre to revise its approach towards the state and requested that the demands of Kerala be accepted. (PTI)
