: Sailing into his third year in office, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy today said the thin majority of the Congress-led UDF in the assembly never came in the way of the stability or performance of his government.
"When we came to power (with a slender majority of 72 seats in the 140-member house) there were many sceptics who doubted the stability of the government. But we proved the sceptics wrong and performed well in the last two years", he told a press meet on the eve of the second anniversary of the ministry.
"The success of the ministry was that it worked as a united team from the start. In a coalition differences are bound to happen but they were sorted out and such issues never came in the way of performance of the government," he said.
Sounding confident that the government would press ahead with its motto of "development and care," Chandy said the government had made several achievements during the period, including in the development front.
Chandy dismissed the possibility of a cabinet reshuffle or bringing new faces in the ministry, which recently gained currency amid speculations that KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala might join the cabinet with a plum portfolio.
On the complaint of community organisations like Sree Narayana Dharmaparipalana Yogam (of Ezhava community) and Nair Service Society that the majority interests had been neglected, he said "let them make it clear what exactly their grievances are and government will address them. Whatever demands they had made so far had been met," he said.
Chandy said the Kochi Metro rail, Kannur airport, Vizhijnam port, mono rail for Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode and Kochi SmartCity were the "flagship" infrastructure projects that the government had taken forward.
Waste-management and acquisition of land for development were two problem areas and effective steps would be taken to address them.
