Thiruvananthapuram | Kerala BJP president and MLA Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Friday said that the white paper tabled by Chief Minister V D Satheesan in the Assembly on the state's finances had reinforced concerns he had been raising for more than a year about Kerala's economic health.
Responding to the document tabled in the Assembly on Thursday, Chandrasekhar alleged that the previous CPI(M)-led LDF government headed by Pinarayi Vijayan had severely weakened the state's finances and left Kerala facing mounting fiscal pressures.
In a Facebook post, he said debt had risen to 38 per cent of the state's gross domestic product (GDP), while 99 per cent of revenue receipts were being spent on meeting routine expenditure.
According to him, this had left very little room for development spending, with capital expenditure falling to around one per cent.
"In short, the LDF government turned Kerala's economy into nothing more than a Ponzi scheme," Chandrasekhar said.
The BJP leader said the findings contained in the white paper matched the warnings he had been issuing over the past 14 months.
"The white paper exposing Kerala's true financial condition proves that everything I said was correct to the letter," he said.
Chandrasekhar also criticised both the CPI(M) and the Congress, arguing that a decade of Left rule, coupled with what he described as the Congress' failure to act as an effective opposition, had contributed to the state's present financial difficulties.
"With no new investments, our Kerala today is sinking under a mounting debt burden," he said.
Drawing a comparison with national politics, Chandrasekhar claimed that the Congress had followed a similar economic approach during its tenure at the Centre between 2004 and 2014.
He further alleged that the party was pursuing the same model in states such as Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Telangana.
The white paper, titled "Kerala's Fiscal Health, A Status Report" presents a stark assessment of the state's financial position, warning that rising debt, mounting liabilities and heavy committed expenditure have severely constrained Kerala's ability to invest in development and infrastructure.
CPI(M) leader K N Balagopal has accused the UDF of "misleading" the public about the state's financial position, saying the white paper had exposed several claims made by the opposition in recent years
