The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] held out an olive branch to the Communist Party of India (CPI) on Saturday, after the latter accused the government of “whimsically” inking a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Central government to secure the PM-SHRI federal allocation for school education, sans consultation with the cabinet or the Left Democratic Front (LDF).
General Education Minister V Sivankutty, who authorised the controversial Central-State accord, called on CPI State Secretary Binoy Viswam at the party’s headquarters at M N Smarakam in Thiruvananthapuram to clarify matters. He later told reporters that the talks were cordial and had helped clear the air.
On Wednesday, CPI State Secretary Binoy Viswam sparked a fraught phase in coalition relations by publicly chastising the government for “surreptitiously” signing the agreement, which, he stated, undermined the Left’s national resistance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) insidious bid to saffronise schooling.
Mr Viswam said Kerala had taken the Centre’s bait linking the release of PM-SHRI funds to compliance with the “RSS-inspired” New Education Policy (NEP).
Mr Viswam dashed off a protest letter to the LDF convenor, T.P. Ramakrishnan, and other allies, expressing the CPI’s deep anguish over the “breach of coalition propriety and the cabinet’s collective responsibility”.
