Kerala’s fiscal worries – The Hindu
At his first press conference after the Congress-led United Democratic Front’s (UDF) landslide victory in the 2026 Assembly elections, V.D. Satheesan, Kerala’s Opposition Leader for the past five years, claimed that the UDF had “inherited” a virtually empty State treasury. A treasury so bare that, Mr. Satheesan quipped, a cat and her litter had made it their home. Humour aside, the state of Kerala’s finances will be in sharp focus as the new UDF government takes office. The State’s fiscal health and the Union’s fiscal policies vis-a-vis Kerala have been a dominant theme that coursed through the 10-year-rule of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala. It never strayed from the centre of LDF-UDF interactions, and has more often than not, shaped the discourse of Centre-State relations. The tallest claims of the Pinarayi Vijayan government have been that it fast-forwarded development overcoming aggressively hostile Union government policies. Mr. Satheesan and the UDF have been vocal critics of the Left’s fiscal policy, and what they called Mr. Vijayan’s dismal failure in forcing the Bharatiya Janata Party …





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