Pinarayi Vijayan accuses Kerala CM of insulting coastal community through ‘callous’ remarks about their plight

Kerala’s Leader of the Opposition Pinarayi Vijayan on Wednesday (August 12, 2026) stated that Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan’s “callous” declaration that “it was not the first time fishers went missing at sea” added insult to the coastal community “injured by the lack of government support” during the rainstorms that wreaked havoc across the State recently.

Mr Vijayan told a press conference that Mr Satheesan had sought to cover up the government’s “bungled” disaster response by commenting, rather “cruelly”, that as many as 148 fishers were lost to sea during the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) dispensation. At the same time, fewer than 10 seafarers went missing under his watch.

“Mr Satheesan has sought to inject coloured politics into a calamity that has left several families bereaved of their breadwinners. His reprehensible attempt to draw a comparison between death figures under past and present administrations smacked of a brazen lack of humaneness. The statement is unbecoming of a Chief Minister, whose job is to unify the polity during a crisis”, he said. 

Mr Vijayan said Mr Satheesan’s “dismissive attitude” to the plight of fishers has caused bitterness among the coastal community. “Another Minister unsympathetically stated that locating the bodies of missing fishers took time and the government was not to blame,” he said. 

Mr Satheesan’s “brazen lie” that the UDF government’s deployment of helicopters, military aircraft and drones for marine search and rescue was a first in Kerala is “a mockery of truth and an insult to the coastal community’s intelligence,” he said.

“The government’s ineptitude cost the State the golden hour when a rapid marine rescue operation would have saved lives. Ministers and ruling-front MLAs played truant rather than reassure the families of the missing fishers or coordinate relief, rescue and rehabilitation in flood-affected regions in Kerala,” he said.

Mr Vijayan said Mr Satheesan’s “high-sounding announcement” that the UDF government would at a stroke negate the time period of seven years set for compensating the families of fishers whose bodies could not be recovered was “mendacious propaganda.”

“The LDF government had removed the restrictive regulation in the aftermath of the Okhi cyclone in the 2016-17 period and set a future template for disaster response, relief, rescue and rehabilitation in the years to come”, he added. 

Mr Vijayan said the distraught families of the missing fishers had to stage sit-ins on the road for several days to get the search operations in motion. “UDF social media handles, at the instance of the government, disparaged the survivors for standing up for their rights. Relief camps lacked basic facilities, including food and medicine; on-ground coordination involving the local volunteers and government agencies was totally absent”, he stated. 

Mr Vijayan noted that the grief-stricken fisher families were staring at an uncertain future. “For them, the government appeared a distant and unresponsive authority. Their dear ones remained missing at sea due to the government’s belated disaster response. The families require emotional closure and financial assistance, including jobs for survivors, compensation for lost boats and fishing gear, and State funding for their children’s education”, he added.