Countering Kerala government's criticisms over slashing the state's borrowing limits, minister of state for external affairs V Muraleedharan has said that the state government is trying to mislead the people and cover up its financial mismanagement and extravagance.
Muraleedharan told reporters on Monday that the present borrowing limits were prescribed for the first three quarters of 2023-24 fiscal and the borrowing limits for the last quarter would be sanctioned later only. Hence the criticisms by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Finance Minister K N Balagopal could be either due to ignorance or a deliberate attempt to politicise the issue, he said.
He also said that the CPM government was pushing Kerala into a debt trap through fiscal mismanagement and extravaganza like foreign trips of the Chief Minister and ministers and paying honorarium to former Congress MP K V Thomas who was recently appointed as state government's representative in Delhi. Unless the centre imposed regulation on borrowings Kerala would face the financial crisis like some neighbouring countries, he said.
Meanwhile, Congress, which is the opposition party in Kerala, was continuing its silence on the matter citing that the reasons for allegedly slashing the borrowing limits were not yet known.
Kerala government had maintained that the borrowing limits of Kerala was slashed by the centre from Rs. 32,442 crore to Rs. 15,390 crore without stating any reason.