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Congress person Mathew Kuzhalnadan, MLA, connected Tuesday (April 7, 2026) sought to respire caller beingness into the politically stormy accusation that the past Left Democratic Front (LDF) government’s “corruption-driven wilful delay” in opening the shutters of the Thottappally spillway successful Alappuzha had caused the devastating floods that laid Kuttanad, Kerala’s atom bowl, to discarded successful 2018.
Mr. Kuzhalnadan told a property league successful Ernakulam that helium had precocious obtained incriminating audio grounds of the past Water Resources Minister K. Krishnankutty, presently the Minister for Electricty, admitting to a enactment workfellow connected the telephone that “official bungling and corruption” had caused the disaster, which destroyed houses, displaced hundreds of families and washed distant ample swaths of paddy successful Alappuzha district.
Mr. Kuzhalnadan alleged that Mr. Krishnankutty said the enforcement technologist had recommended opening the spillway’s shutters aboriginal arsenic the rainfall intensified. However, helium alleged, “a big of ruling-front governmental interests” prevented the authorities from opening the shutter to sphere the sandbank downstream.
Mr. Kuzhalnadan alleged that the authorities had contracted a businessperson to excavation the soil deposit for ₹62 per cubic metre. In 2018, a cubic metre of stream soil fetched ₹2,000 successful the unfastened market, given the large request successful the operation manufacture for the finite resource. Mr. Kuzhalnadan accused the LDF of aboriginal “covering up the decision, sacrificing the lives and livelihoods of the radical of Kuttanad connected the altar of corruption.”
He besides alleged that the authorities further “exacerbated” the flood concern by diverting h2o intended for Tamil Nadu to the Peringalkuthu dam successful Thrissur territory astatine the behest of businesspersons progressive successful backstage powerfulness generation.
UDF reviving discredited lies: Pinarayi
Meanwhile, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters successful Kannur that the UDF was “resurrecting discredited lies” that had informed the Opposition’s run successful 2021.
“Several autarkic adept committees had debunked the UDF’s falsehood. The authorities did not origin the flooding. Unprecedented rainfall, catalysed by clime change, did. The desperation of impending decision (in Assembly elections) has prompted the Congress to broadcast aged lies”, helium said.
Mr. Vijayan said questions astir the “misappropriation of funds” collected from the nationalist ostensibly for Wayanad rehabilitation had driven the Congress enactment to the wall, and enactment leaders were scrambling to divert voters’ attraction from the UDF’s “moral illness and fiscal shenanigans by lying.”
Krishnankutty denies charges
Meanwhile, Mr. Krishnankutty, quoting 2018 Assembly replies to questions regarding the flooding raised by the UDF, dismissed Mr. Kuzhalnadan’s accusations arsenic a “last-minute predetermination run stunt prompted by disheartenment.”
