Kerala’s political arena erupted into open warfare on Wednesday as Leader of Opposition V D Satheesan formally accepted Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s repeated taunts and challenged him to an unrestricted public debate on the state’s development record, declaring that the Chief Minister is free to fix the date, time, and venue for the face-off that could dominate the upcoming local body election campaign.

The showdown escalated after Vijayan, while unveiling the LDF’s local body poll agenda, launched a blistering attack accusing the Congress-led UDF of systematically obstructing every transformative infrastructure project, from the Vizhinjam deep-water port and national highway expansion to the LIFE Mission housing scheme, Wayanad Twin Tunnel, GAIL pipeline, K-Rail semi-high-speed corridor, Kerala Bank merger, K-Fone telecommunications venture, and the government’s flagship extreme-poverty eradication programme.

Satheesan fired back with a point-by-point rebuttal, asserting that the LDF government has repeatedly stalled or abandoned its own projects while shielding corrupt leaders, reminding the Chief Minister that two senior CPM functionaries remain behind bars in connection with the multi-crore Sabarimala gold theft case and highlighting Congress’s unprecedented decisiveness in expelling former MLA Rahul Mamkootathil within hours of sexual assault allegations surfacing against him.

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Dismissing Satheesan’s detailed written response posted on social media as “pathetic, baseless, and a tangle of mistakes,” Vijayan doubled down in the Assembly corridor, claiming the Opposition leader had failed to answer a single substantive question on development policy and instead resorted to deflection and falsehoods.

With both leaders now locked in a high-stakes public challenge that has electrified Kerala’s political landscape ahead of crucial local body elections, the proposed debate is poised to become the defining spectacle, forcing the Chief Minister and the Leader of Opposition to defend their respective records on governance, transparency, and delivery before the people of Kerala.

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