A combative Kerala Finance Minister KM Mani has dared his detractors who have threatened to stop him from exercising his Constitutional right to present the state budget for 2015-16.
Mani has been at the receiving end from detractors within his own party and the larger Congress-led United Democratic Front in the wake of allegations of bribery charges hurled by bar owners.
“Get me right. If I’m indeed the finance minister, it’s me alone who will get to present the budget,” Mani asserted to newspersons at an interaction hurriedly called last evening.
“And this is not to suggest that I would get done with merely tabling it by some means, which is just right Constitutionally speaking, and run away from the prospect of facing the full House,” the finance minister said in rarely articulated bluster.
The timing of his interaction, calculated aggression in tone, and the combative body language were not entirely lost on political observers as they manifested ahead of a crucial meeting of a high-powered committee of the ruling front slated for this evening to take stock of the political situation in the State.
Mani chose to dub as ‘orchestrated’ and executed along ‘professional marketing lines’ a series of events in which a certain ‘liquor hawker’ flaunted CDs purportedly carrying contents of his conversation suggesting his involvement in bribery.
FABRICATED EVIDENCE
This is at best fabricated evidence that cannot hope to stand the scrutiny of law, he said, and reminded detractors he has been a good lawyer himself who knows a thing or two about the acceptability of evidence.
Mani said the entire controversy is nothing short of political blackmailing carried out at the behest of known persons who nursed personal rancour against him.
This is the first time after the bribery charges were thrown at him that Mani chose to defend himself in public. Citing 50 years of record in active politics, he said he is far too experienced and only too well known for his credentials to give in to the designs of detractors.
“The liquor baron started off saying he handed over Rs 10 lakh as bribe, but now he has inflated the figure to Rs 30 crore,” he said. This is as absurd as the insinuation that the finance minister has a note-counting machine installed at his ancestral house in his Pala constituency.
‘BANKRUPT BJP’
Asked about the dawn-to-dusk hartal that the BJP had sponsored seeking his resignation, Mani merely said that it pointed to the extent of political bankruptcy within the party that had given the call for the shut-down.
He also said he was not living in a fool’s paradise to anoint his son and MP from Kottayam Jose K Mani as successor to chairmanship of his party or as finance minister in the unlikely event of his ceding it.
These are laughable ideas borne out of the fertile imagination of some people which Main said was unwarranted.
“Jose will find his own feet in the rough and tumble of Kerala politics and earn his right to party posts in due course. Give him some time,” Mani said.
“The United Democratic Front is my strength. And I will present the budget as long as I'm finance minister. As long as there is one, it is his job alone to do it.”