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The Communist Party of India (CPI) appeared hesitant to warm up to the Communist Party of India (Marxist)‘s [CPI(M)] attempts to mollify the “indignant ally” miffed by the government’s “unnatural haste” in signing on to the Central government’s politically controversial PM SHRI scheme for school education, without consultation with the Cabinet or the Left Democratic Front (LDF). General Education Minister V. Sivankutty, who authorised the contentious Central-State accord, called on CPI State secretary Binoy Viswam at the party’s headquarters at MN Smarakam in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday to clarify matters. He later told reporters that the talks were cordial and helped clear the air. However, CPI leader and Civil Supplies Minister G.R. Anil, who accompanied Mr. Sivankutty to the meeting, appeared to strike a different note. “Mr. Sivankutty owed the public an explanation why he inked an agreement the Cabinet had set aside twice, given its political and policy implications. The Minister is yet to provide clarity on why the government signed the deal in haste, without broad-based consultations within the LDF and the Cabinet,” he said. Mr. Anil said the meeting was warm, with the rider that personal bonhomie between leaders had little bearing on governance, policy, and politics. On Wednesday, Mr. 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). An urgent meeting of the CPI’s State Secretariat on Wednesday reportedly opined that the government should seek legal recourse against the Centre’s imposition of unjust conditions for the release of statutory allocations, rather than “jumping the gun” to ink a “politically compromising” agreement. It also noted that the State should sign any MoU with the Centre only on behalf of the Kerala Governor, not by a bureaucrat. Moreover, the Cabinet should have the final say on policy matters and fiscal issues that required the Finance department’s nod. Mr. Viswam dashed off a protest letter to LDF convener T.P. Ramakrishnan and other allies expressing the CPI’s deep anguish over the “breach of coalition propriety and the Cabinet’s collective responsibility.” Mr. Ramakrishnan stated that the LDF would review the PM SHRI MoU. He said the coalition would address the CPI’s anxiety concerning the Central scheme. However, Mr. Ramakrishnan did not set a date for the meeting.
