THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Even when Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan reiterates the approvals given to breweries and blending-compounding unit were cancelled to avoid a controversy, it’s evident the Left front and the government were struggling to wriggle out of the unexpected row that put them in a quandary.
The dissent within the CPM and the CPI played a major role in the decision. Also, the government did not want the brewery row to mar its efforts towards building a new Kerala.
Undoubtedly, it’s a political victory for the opposition and Ramesh Chennithala. It was a bunch of allegations raised by the opposition leader when the Chief Minister was abroad that later snowballed into a major controversy. Though industries minister E P Jayarajan and excise minister T P Ramakrishnan tried to justify the decision, the opposition mounted attack cornering the government.
Later, it was revealed that one of the companies - Power Infratech - was sanctioned 10 acres of land in the Kinfra park in Ernakulam and Sree Chakra Distillery, which was given permission to compound, blend and bottle IMFL, turned out to be defunct as per RoC records. With more evidence tumbling out, the government was in a fix.
There were issues within the Left front too. The CPI expressed its displeasure over not discussing the matter within the front. The recent CPM state secretariat too expressed unhappiness over the excise minister taking such a major decision - deviating from the earlier decision by Left government in 1999 - without sufficient discussions within the party. The CPM leadership even asked the government to re-examine the approvals given for breweries. All these led to the government cancelling the decision. The CPM central leadership is learnt to have come up with the stance that it’s a decision by the party state unit and there was no need to take blame unnecessarily.
“The government should learn its lesson from the brewery row when taking new decisions,” said CPI state secretary Kanam Rajendran. The CPI state chief, who had initially expressed dissent over the brewery issue, reiterated that the approvals were cancelled to end a controversy while efforts are on to create a new Kerala.