While speaking to the media in Malappuram during his campaign trail, Vijayan said that this was the first meeting with the media after he began the Assembly election campaign and from "the responses that I have had in the meetings, it is unbelievable as people have realised that Kerala in the past five years has changed a lot, under the Left rule".

 

"I have realised that the people also have realised that only the Left government can assure of the overall development of the state. Hence the opposition -- the Congress and the BJP -- are understandably jittery and showing signs of desperation," said Vijayan,

 

He said despite the state facing a series of disasters, the Left government with the unstinted support of the people was able to face all the difficulties.

 

"It's here that the government did not get the desired and expected support from the Congress or the BJP. When we were facing serious shortage of funds, despite repeated pleas to increase the borrowing powers of the state government, it was shot down by the Centre. The various probe agencies of the Centre have been trying their best to scuttle the development plans of the state and in all these, the Congress and the BJP were hand in hand," said Vijayan.

 

Like in the past 10 days, Vijayan has time and again reminded the role played by the government in tackling Covid and on Thursday also he repeated the same that when the world was stuttering under Covid, Kerala bravely faced it and statistics have shown that the spread of Covid in the country is the least as we have the maximum number of people, who have not been affected with Covid.

 

Kerala continues to have the lowest death rate, even when we are home to a huge elderly population.

 

On the recent utterances of RSS ideologue R.Balasankar that there is a secret pact between the CPI-M and the state unit of the BJP, he said, the Left is a cohesive unit and does not go after opportunistic alliances, and strongly emphasised that they do not need the support of any communal forces.

 

"It's the Congress here which is the B-team of the BJP and we all have seen what has happened in states like Goa and a few others," added Vijayan.

 

On the Sabarimala temple issue, Vijayan said their stand on it is clear and at the moment the issue is before the apex court and once the verdict comes, the state government will sit down and discuss the verdict with all concerned.

 

Incidentally, this is the first time that Vijayan is spearheading the election campaign of the Left as in the past it was their star campaigner and arch rival of Vijayan -- V.S. Achuthanandan.