The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Opposition has sought to discredit the Left Democratic Front’s (LDF) “vaunted” claims about the State’s robust start-up ecosystem, its quantum jump in industrial development, and enviable ease of doing business climate.

Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan’s riposte to the LDF at a press conference in Kochi on Monday also appeared to assume the contours of a tilting counter to Congress Working Committee (CWC) member and MP Shashi Tharoor’s controversial opinion piece lauding the LDF’s start-up sector achievements.

The LDF had capitalised on the article, which went viral on social and conventional media, to call the UDF’s “Kerala in decline” political narrative a hoax.

Mr. Satheesan released a voluminous set of statistics seeking to prove that the LDF’s assertions were a deceptive jugglery of figures, half-truths, exaggerations, and falsehoods to bolster the government’s “development bombast”.

He claimed the government had attempted to create a smokescreen of falsehoods by misleadingly asserting that entrepreneurs had established three lakh industrial units in the State since 2021.

Mr. Satheesan observed that the purported industrial growth did not manifest in the State’s Gross Domestic Product, which was among the lowest in the country.

“Cyclical gGovernment surveys cannot overlook the purported infusion of ₹30,000 crore or more into the State’s economy. The LDF’s claims did not reflect in the dismally low economic growth rate,” he added.

Mr Satheesan alleged that the so-called significant growth in the State’s start-up sector was yet another fabrication proclaimed as truth by government propagandists and its town criers.

He stated that Kerala’s IT export value appeared to increase on paper due to the rupee’s decline in the global financial market.

He alleged the government had taken a page from its pandemic-era playbook to pull the wool over the public eye.

Mr. Satheesan said the LDF had succeeded in hoodwinking international media into praising the government’s COVID-19 management.

It obfuscated the pandemic death figures and employed public relations agencies to paint a rosy picture. “As many as 28,000 deaths during COVID-19 remain unaccounted for,” he alleged.

Mr. Satheesan said the government’s repeated crowing about the State’s high ranking in ease-of-doing-business surveys lacked credibility. “The World Bank had stopped authenticating such global surveys because of widespread fraud,” he said.