In God's Own Country, the angels seem to be propping up a farcical Government. In an RTI reply, the Kerala Government admitted that the annual speech that the Governor made this time at the beginning of the Budget session of the State Assembly under Article 176 of the Constitution was not approved formally by the State Cabinet, as is required by constitutional practice. Article 173(1) says that it is the Council of Ministers, with the Chief Minister at its head, that should "aid and advise" the Governor in his functions except in matters where he has a discretion under the Constitution, like appointing the Chief Minister. The Governor's speech to the Assembly, detailing the plans of the State Government, begins with the words "My Government", which means that the address has to be approved by the Council of Ministers. Thus, the Cabinet's approval of the text of the speech is absolutely necessary.

Kerala Governor RS Gavai, a former Union Home Secretary, addressed this year's first session of the State Assembly on February 24. The last State Cabinet meeting before the Assembly session began was held on February 17. The RTI application specifically asked as to what was the decision taken by the Cabinet at this meeting regarding the Governor's address to the State Assembly session. The official reply was: "No decision was taken." The State Government has admitted in writing that the Cabinet had appointed a sub-committee to draft the Governor's address at its meeting on February 10 and that after February 17 there was no meeting of the Cabinet. On being asked whether there was any meeting of the Cabinet that approved the speech to be sent to the Governor, the official reply was that "In the Cabinet minutes there is no mention of such action". It is, therefore, evident that the Governor's address containing all the important Government announcements did not receive a formal approval of the Cabinet.

These facts that newspapers in Kerala have brought out confirm earlier reports that the Governor's address on February 24 had not received formal approval of the Cabinet. Now it transpires that the Cabinet meeting that day was beset by differences and, therefore, the text of the speech was left to the Cabinet sub-committee to finalise. This sub-committee did meet after the Cabinet adjourned and finalised the draft. However, this does not fulfil the constitutional requirement.

The text has to be approved on record by the Cabinet as a whole. Since this did not happen, the entire debate in the Assembly on the address, therefore, becomes a farce. The enactment of this farce is just one of the many scams that are rocking the CPI(M)-led coalition Government in the State. Only recently there was yet another ridiculous incident within the State Government. Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, who has fallen out of favour with his Cabinet colleagues, was asked to get rid of his political secretary who had fallen fowl of party boss Pinarayi Vijayan. The replacement that the party boss suggested was not acceptable to the Chief Minister. The result, Mr Achuthanandan is without a political secretary.

The Chief Minister and the party boss have been slugging it out in public on almost every issue. The many somersaults of the State Government on the issue of encroachment on Government land in the tea gardens of the resort town of Munnar are revealing. Mr Achuthanandan announced the determination of his Government to get rid of the encroachments. But Mr Vijayan and his supporters threaten to attack anyone who dared to do that. The reason: The CPI(M) and its many friends are responsible for the encroachments in the area where the value of land has touched the sky. As a result, every officer designated to get the encroachments vacated seeks the first opportunity to get out.

The entire State Government is so infested with Marxist politics that several senior IAS and IPS officials have sought assignments at the Centre to escape the embarrassment they face in implementing the LDF Government's policies. This is because in Kerala it is not one Government that rules, and there are several centres of power. The Kerala High Court recently had two affidavits before it, both signed by secretaries of different departments and each contradicting the other. It had, therefore, to inquire which was the real affidavit of the Government.

This joke of a State Government goes on exposing its fault-lines almost every day. Mr Vijayan has been implicated in a corruption scandal worth hundreds of crores of rupees that allegedly occurred when he was the Power Minister during the previous avatar of the CPI(M)-led coalition Government. When the issue of whether the Cabinet should advise the Governor on sanctioning the prosecution of Mr Vijayan came up, Mr Achuthanandan was all for prosecution, but his Cabinet colleagues differed. Ultimately, the Governor took the decision to allow prosecution on his own. The State Government ended up spending crores of rupees to defend Mr Vijayan by going to the Supreme Court but failed.

Yet another farce is the CPI(M)'s agitation against price rise. The agitation is centred on Delhi and is directed against the UPA Government for promoting price rise. But right on the eve of this agitation, newspapers in Kerala exposed the fact that the State Government was making profits on the pulse stocks that had been supplied by the Centre. An embarrassed State Government had to reduce the price to the level that the central agencies were providing the stocks at.

That the CPI(M) in Kerala is merely seeking to divert the attention of the public from its own miserable performance in promoting this agitation against price rise became clear when Mr Vijayan, accompanied by three CPI(M) Ministers, announced an extended tour of the Gulf to collect donations for a party memorial of a former Chief Minister. It is ironical that the CPI(M)'s top bosses were happily touring the Gulf when the party's rank and file are agitating against the Centre.

The Marxists claim to be speaking for the poor. But the CPI(M) in Kerala is the richest political party in the State, owning properties worth over Rs 1,500 crore. Two huge scandals that rocked the CPI(M)-led Government were exposed just within the last three years wherein party bosses were found accepting crores of rupees from tainted sources originating in the Gulf. In one case, the party had to return the money to escape the consequences of accepting it in the first place.

While the Marxists are the self-proclaimed champions of secularism, they have no compunctions about sleeping with rabid communal outfits like Abdul Naseer Madani's PDP. Kerala, it seems, has become a stage for the theatre of the absurd.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, April 12, 2010