Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday left for the US for medical treatment after the rescue and relief operations following the unprecedented deluge in the State. He is expected to be back in Kerala after three weeks of treatment at the reputed Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota for an as-yet-undisclosed ailment.
Pinarayi, 74, has left for the US without assigning the charge of the Chief Minister in his absence to any of his Cabinet colleagues. Sources said that he himself would examine important Government files and take decisions on urgent administrative matters using the electronic file system sitting in the US.
The Chief Minister, who left Kerala by an Emirates flight from Thiruvananthapuram airport at 4.40 AM Sunday and would fly to the US via Dubai, was originally scheduled to leave for the treatment on Monday but he chose to undertake the trip a day earlier. It is said that only a few persons in the State Administration were privy to the schedule change.
The Chief Minister’s trip, which sources said was unavoidable, has come at a time when the State is in the middle of a public health challenge in the form of a post-flood outbreak of leptospirosis (rat fever). Pinarayi’s earlier decision was to undertake the trip on August 19 but he postponed in the wake of the deluge.
Pinarayi had on Saturday visited Governor P Sathasivam and briefed him about his trip to the US. He also updated the Governor about the steps initiated by the Government for the relief and rehabilitation of the flood-affected people. Nearly 500 people had lost lives in the floods and about over 1.4 million people had to be shifted to relief camps.
Though reports said CPI(M)’s central committee member EP Jayarajan, who had recently returned to the Cabinet about 22 months after his resignation from it over charges of nepotism would preside over Cabinet meetings in Pinarayi’s absence, he refused to confirm this saying it would be known after the Cabinet’s meeting.
While a source close to the Chief Minister’s office said that Pinarayi’s decision to go to US for treatment was taken on the basis of a consensus of views among doctors in Indian and the US on the treatment procedures to be followed, Jayarajan, Industries Minister, said, “He has gone for a medical check-up. He would be back once that check-up is completed.”
Jayarajan told newsmen in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday that there was no need for worries about administrative stalemate in the absence of the Chief Minister. “There is no need to hand over CM’s charge to anyone. The administration will work smoothly. Crucial decisions will be taken whenever necessary. There will be no problems,” he said.
Pinarayi has left Kerala for the US at a time when the Health Department has issued extreme alert in the State in the wake of what is being seen as a post-flood outbreak of leptospirosis, a communicable disease commonly known as rat fever. The suspected outbreak of the disease has sown anxiety among the people, especially of the flood-affected regions.
It is also the time when the efforts for the rehabilitation of the flood-affected people, almost all of whom have left the relief camps to where they were shifted during the deluge, are at their peak. Numerous complaints have come up about shortage of drinking water and food and the houses of thousands of people are yet to be made livable.
However, Industries Minister Jayarajan, considered as No 2 in the Cabinet, said the rehabilitation works would be carried out without problems. In the absence of the Chief Minister, Jayarajan would be in charge of collecting the contributions flowing into the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund.
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