Congress corners Tharoor over LDF govt praise, mouthpiece dubs Kerala ‘graveyard for industries’

The editorial went on to say that pulling the Congress-led UDF back at a time when it was fighting against the Pinarayi Vijayan government inside and outside the Assembly would be “suicidal”. Accusing the Vijayan government of allegedly making Kerala a “graveyard for industries”, the Congress daily claimed it was “ridiculous” to praise the state government for industrial growth.

Trouble started for Tharoor last Friday after he praised the LDF government for its “initiatives in economic innovation and sustainable growth” in an opinion piece for The New Indian Express. “I had been constrained to observe in the past that ‘god’s own country’ was the devil’s own playground for business. If that is no longer true, we all have reasons to celebrate… Kerala is beginning to stand out as a model of economic innovation and sustainable growth,” he wrote in the piece titled “Changing Kerala: Lumbering jumbo to a lithe tiger”.

The praise from the high-profile Congress leader has given an opportunity to the LDF to again project its Kerala development narrative and counter the Congress’s frequent allegations that development has come to a standstill under the Vijayan regime. On Saturday, the CPI(M) daily Deshabhimani prominently featured the Malayalam version of Tharoor’s article.

As the state Congress leaders joined hands to slam him, Tharoor stuck to his stand of “acknowledging whoever takes the lead for development”. “The article is based on facts and figures. If people do not like it and if there are other facts, I am ready to hear that too,’’ he said on Sunday.

In a clear sign that the Congress is in no mood to accept Tharoor’s clarification, the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) in the Assembly, V D Satheesan, on Monday claimed that the government’s statistics on investment were “inaccurate”. “The situation is similar to that of the pandemic days when the Left government used PR agencies to cover up Covid deaths in the state. Only later did the truth come out that Kerala was only behind Maharashtra in terms of Covid deaths. If the government claims there have been three lakh new ventures over the last three years, each Assembly segment must have 2,000 of these. Even if each entrepreneurial venture had a Rs 10 lakh-investment, the state should have seen a growth of Rs 30,000 crore and it must have reflected in the state’s GDP, which continues to be stagnant,” he said.

The controversy over Tharoor’s article seems to have left him isolated within the party. Senior Congress leader K Muraleedharan, who had once been a vocal proponent of Tharoor entering active politics, has also distanced himself from the latter. “If a leader of our party has stated something wrong, we have the central leadership to look into it. The outcome of the last Lok Sabha elections and the recent Assembly bypolls show that the people accept what the Opposition has said. We want Tharoor to correct his stand. His article has spelt trouble for the Congress. He should not have given ammunition to the LDF to target the Congress,” Muraleedharan said.

Apart from being cornered by his partymen, Tharoor’s article has also led to a sentiment within the party that the diplomat-turned-politician has cast a shadow on the UDF’s prospects in the upcoming local body as well as Assembly elections, which is scheduled for next year. “In the ease of doing business, the Centre has not ranked the Kerala government. It is a strategy of the CPI(M). Unfortunately, Tharoor has quoted (state Industries Minister) P Rajeev,” Congress MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan said.