Kerala Assembly polls: Piyush Goyal slams UDF and LDF, says both indulged in scams

Union Minister of Railways, Commerce and Industry and senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Piyush Goyal on Monday attacked the Left Democratic Front (LDF)-led Kerala Government alleging corruption, nepotism and communalism and added that the only progress that Kerala witnessed was in the level of corruption.

Slamming UDF and LDF, he said that both fronts are two sides of the same coin. "Of course, the only progress we can see is that UDF indulged in the solar scam and the LDF indulges in the gold scam. This cannot be accepted by the people of Kerala any more," he said.

He said that both LDF and UDF have wasted the opportunities given to them by the people of Kerala.

"God's own country that has a great spiritual lineage is suffering from nepotism, corruption, communalism, politics of appeasement, total mismanagement and murder. The people of Kerala have given UDF and LDF opportunities to serve them alternatively but sadly instead of serving them, they have only exploited the state," he said.

"It is unfortunate that CPI-M today stands for corruption, persecution and murder," Goyal said.

Other than Kerala, taking the examples of Governments in Gujarat and Rajasthan he alleged that both fronts failed in terms of development or COVID-19 management.

"Despite so much support from the Central government in the last five years, if we only take large schemes of Rs 150 crores to Rs 1,000 crores, 1,70,000 crores were sanctioned to projects in Kerala but that level of visible economic activity is not to be seen."

"The state which has tremendous potential for tourism, which has potential and capacity for industrialisation, for becoming the centre of IT industry, for services, has lost out in the race for development."

He said that that the conduct of the LDF led Kerala government on the Sabarimala issue has been most deplorable.

"They filed cases against 60,000 of BJP, RSS karyakartas and swayamsevaks only to terrorise Hindus in the state. In fact, we are very keen to implement the Sabrimala rail connectivity project also, but when I see the state of various railway projects going on in Kerala, I wonder if they will allow Sabarimala also to be connected," he said.

"MPs give me letters that they want the project to be done but we have nine projects going on in Kerala for development of new rail infrastructure largely stuck because the state government does not provide land for those projects and despite sanctioning nearly three times the amount sanctioned by Congress government they are unable to complete these projects due to apathy of the government," he further said.

"The Narendra Modi government increased the allocation for railway projects in or passing through Kerala, which used to be 372 crores per year from 2009 to 2014 at an average that now between 2014 to 2020 the government at an average sanctioned Rs 903 cores per year for projects," he added.

He also said that electrification of railways is underway at a fast pace and promised that in two and a half years the entire Kerala railways will be electrified.

State Assembly elections for the 140-member Kerala will be held in a single phase on April 6. The counting of votes will take place on May 2.

( With inputs from ANI )