Election stunt, says Opposition

The ruling Left Democratic Front government in Kerala stands increasingly under fire over its plan to declare that the state has eliminated extreme poverty, with opposition figures describing the announcement as misleading election stunt and politically motivated.

- HD Bureau

Leader of the Opposition V. D. Satheesan declared that the effort to reduce the number of “extreme poverty-stricken" families from 450,000 as stated in the 2021 manifesto to just 64,000 in the latest list constitutes “an affront to the needy population” and questions the methodology used to identify beneficiaries.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s state leadership contends that the majority of the progress in poverty reduction was driven by central government schemes, rather than state-level initiatives.