The Kerala Assembly on Thursday came under siege both from inside and outside as Opposition MlAs spent the entire day and night inside the Assembly hall while thousands of lDF and Yuva Morcha activists surrounded the Assembly complex in a determined bid to block ‘Budget-seller’ and bribery scam accused Finance Minister KM Mani from presenting the 2015-16 State Budget on Friday.
Realising that it would be impossible for Mani to reach the House from his official residence on Friday morning to present the Budget, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy advised him to spend the night inside the Assembly complex itself and he accepted this. Chandy, other Ministers and all ruling front MlAs also spent the night in the Assembly to defeat Opposition strategies.
By Thursday evening, Thiruvananthapuram, the State capital, wore the look of a pre-conflict battle zone with over 2,500 police personnel armed with all kinds of mob-control paraphernalia, commanded by six Superintendents, 19 Dy SPs, 29 Circle Inspectors and 127 Sub-Inspectors and coordinated by City Commissioner H Venkitesh lined the streets to deal with the protestors.
As part of the Administration’s efforts to defeat the protestors, the District Collector declared Friday as holiday for all educational institutions in 19 wards of the city. He also ordered immediate closure of all liquor outlets in the city. Unprecedented traffic controls were imposed by Thursday evening. The police also blocked all the roads leading to Assembly.
Thousands of activists of pro-CPI(M) DYFI and Yuva Morcha began streaming into the roads near the Assembly complex by late Thursday afternoon to block Mani from reaching the House on Friday to present the Budget in case his decision was to spend the night at his official residence, Prasanthi.
The CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF decided to keep all its 65 MlAs within the Assembly Hall in a strategy to block Mani from entering into the Hall on Friday through any of its five doors. The situation might warrant the intervention of the Watch and Ward staff if there was any move for forceful blockade and the outcome would be unpredictable, observers said.
With MlAs of the Opposition and Ministers and MlAs of the ruling Congress-led UDF spending the night inside the Assembly complex, the agitation against Mani got concentrated in this area making the protests by lDF workers and activists of the DYFI and Yuva Morcha outside the complex merely symbolic.
The lDF and the BJP had several weeks ago asked the Government not to allow Mani to present the Budget as he had been charged with selling Budget proposals in the previous years for money to interested sectors and had been the accused in the Vigilance case pertaining to the allegation of taking Rs 1 crore as bribe from the State’s bar owners.
“Mani will present the Budget at 9 am Friday morning. That is his Constitutional right and responsibility as Finance Minister. I am not sure whether he will read the entire Budget paper but he will present it,” said Government Chief Whip PC George, also the vice-chairman of the Kerala congress (M) of which Mani is the chairman.
“At least ten Watch-and-Ward staff have been deployed for every Opposition MlA. That is the scale of anti-democratic moves the Government is taking to protect this bribery-accused Minister,” said an lDF MlA from the Assembly. “We have 74 MlAs. The lDF has only 65. let us see what happens in the Assembly,” said Antony Raju, general secretary of the KC(M).
Since October 31, the day the bribery charge against Mani was leveled, the Opposition and the BJP have been demanding that he should resign and that he should not be allowed to present the Budget. However, Mani and the Government rejected these demands and even on Thursday, Chandy told the Assembly that Mani himself would present the Budget.