Karat sends truce signal to Kerala: ADB is OK

The CPM politburo sees nothing wrong in the party’s government in Kerala taking loans from the Asian Development Bank, general secretary Prakash Karat said today

The CPM politburo sees nothing wrong in the party’s government in Kerala taking loans from the Asian Development Bank, general secretary Prakash Karat said today, in an attempt to bridge the rift between Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan and his local self-government minister Paloli Md Kutty.

“We have no objection to loans from multilateral and foreign agencies,” he said, pointing out that the West Bengal government had accepted ADB funding for some infrastructure projects as well.

He was talking to reporters on the final day of a series of politburo and central committee meetings here. “What the politburo can do in such cases is to create the framework,” he said.

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The Kerala CPM, headed by Pinarayi Vijayan, had backed Kutty’s plans to borrow from the ADB to fund the upgrade of infrastructure in five civic bodies. But the CM had claimed last week that he had been kept in the dark and blamed the ministers for this.

Karat admitted that the ADB issue had created differences between the Kerala government and the party’s state unit but said they “will be settled at Thiruvananthapuram”.

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