Thiruvananthapuram: The lone Keralite in the Union Cabinet V. Muraleedharan on Friday hit back on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and held him responsible for the slow evacuation of the Kerala diaspora from the Middle East.
Muraleedharan is the Union Minister of State for External Affairs and presently a Rajya Sabha member from Maharashtra and was responding to Vijayan’s remarks made on Thursday.
Vijayan had said that Muraleedharan has some ‘problem’ and is unaware of what happens at the Centre.
Reacting to it, Muraleedharan said Vijayan speaks like this because in Kerala, every decision is taken by Vijayan and other Minister’s have no role.
“But in Delhi, it’s not like that as every department is looked after by the concerned ministers. The problem with Vijayan is that he only writes to Prime Minister. What he should best do is, call his bureaucrats and find out from them, what are the Central guidelines. Then he will not speak like this,” said Muraleedharan.
Muraleedharan blamed Vijayan for not abiding by the Central guidelines.
“We are ready to bring all the Kerala diaspora who wish to return from the Middle East. Here the problem is, it appears that Kerala, which speaks about having set aside 1.35 lakh rooms for isolation, are not there. This was evident when people who arrived on the naval ship from Maldives as they were running from pillar to post,” added Muraleedharan.
“If Vijayan claims he has this many rooms in his custody, then why is he not adhering to the central guidelines of putting all in 14 days institutional isolation. He says Kerala will go in for a week’s isolation and then people will be send to their homes to be in isolation for the rest of the days,” added Muraleedharan, who hails from Kozhikode and is a former State BJP president.
“We are very clear that we are ready to bring in all the diaspora, but we do not wish them to be under duress, once they reach here, as they are already stressed there,” said Muraleedharan.
He also pointed out that numerous requests have come from people who are willing to come on chartered flights.
“Here also the issue is the state government has to give permission,” said Muraleedharan.
This is the second round of tit for tat between the two.
