3 min readThiruvananthapuramUpdated: Feb 15, 2026 09:26 PM IST
Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Mani Shankar Aiyar on Sunday said the only state in India where progress has been made in “Gandhiji’s direction” is CPI(M)-ruled Kerala, and expressed confidence that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan would retain his post after the upcoming Assembly election
The Congress is the main Opposition party in Kerala and is hoping to return to power this year following two consecutive terms of the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front’s rule.
Addressing the Kerala government’s ‘Vision 2031 International Conference on Development and Democracy’ in Thiruvananthapuram, Aiyar said that when Mahatma Gandhi was asked about his dream for India, he had said he was working for an India in which “the poorest will feel it is their country, in the building of which they have an effective voice”.
Aiyar said, “It is ironic that the only state in India in which progress has been made in Gandhiji’s direction is the one ruled by the Marxist-Leninist party of India. I don’t know whether this is a compliment or an insult, but I do regret very much the absence of my party colleagues on this occasion, which is a state occasion and therefore a national occasion.”
“In the presence of the Chief Minister (Pinarayi Vijayan), who I’m sure will be the next Chief Minister, I renew my plea that in order to reinforce Kerala as the best Panchayati Raj state in the country, the state law should be amended on the basis of the experience we have…,” he said.
Calling Kerala India’s leader in Panchayati Raj, Aiyar said the state was “ironically achieving more than anyone else on the expectations of a Congress Prime Minister who’s no more with us, the late Sri Rajiv Gandhi. But while Kerala is the first state in Panchayati Raj in practice, it is only the second best in the law.”
“I am afraid there is no champion for Panchayati Raj left in the country. So, therefore, I have to fall at your feet, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, and say, ‘Please, sir, pick up the baton that the Congress has dropped.’”
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Last week, Congress Working Committee member and former Leader of Opposition in the Kerala Assembly, Ramesh Chennithala, had urged those invited to the conference organised by the Pinarayi Vijayan government to reconsider their participation. In an open letter, he had said, “The conference appears less an academic forum and more a carefully choreographed effort aimed at reclaiming moral legitimacy for an incumbent government whose record on democratic freedoms, institutional integrity, and public accountability is under sustained criticism and increasingly viewed as authoritarian.”
