Kerala   

Antony makes out a case for State

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, FEB. 19. The Kerala Chief Minister, A. K. Antony, today met the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and made out a case for Kerala getting a Convention Centre and an All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Mr. Antony also complained of the State being short-changed in the vote-on-account, on which he had written to the Prime Minister thrice.

Mr. Antony called on the Prime Minister here this evening to seek his intervention in getting Central assistance to the tune of Rs. 1,400 crores from the National Calamity Contingency Fund for helping the State tide over the financial losses it incurred owing to successive droughts. The Prime Minister is said to have told him that a decision would be taken after the visit of a Central team to the State this Friday.

About Kerala being neglected in the interim budget, Mr. Antony later told newspersons that the Prime Minister mentioned receiving his letters. Upset by the fact that Kerala was not sanctioned a Convention Centre - despite being adjudged the best performing State in the tourism sector for three successive years - the Chief Minister urged the Prime Minister to sanction the facility to the State.

Mr. Antony said the State's hopes of getting one of the six AIIMS sanctioned by the Centre had been dashed. He urged the Prime Minister that a seventh AIIMS be sanctioned to the State. ``We are not saying that the States which had already been sanctioned these two facilities should be deprived of them."This apart, the Chief Minister sought the Prime Minister's intervention in addressing the issue of landlessness among tribals at the earliest, getting Finance Ministry's clearance for borrowing Rs. 800 crores from the market and providing subsidised kerosene for traditional fishermen. Also, he brought to Mr. Vajpayee's notice the adverse impact of large-scale grant of licences to foreign trawlers on Kerala's fishermen.

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