Thiruvananthapuram: The incident of two Italian marines allegedly shooting dead two Indian fishermen off Kerala's coast in February and the subsequent legal and diplomatic issues made headlines throughout 2012, which also saw many developments on the state's political arena.
Coming to power with a wafer-thin majority in 2011, the Congress-led UDF government of Oommen Chandy won two assembly by-elections held during the year but strutted and fretted on the state's hyper-active political stage often failing to fulfill many of its tall promises. However, the state's presence in the central ministry rose to an all-time high of eight with the induction of Shashi Tharoor and Kodikunnil Suresh in the council of ministers in the reshuffle in October. It was a comeback for Tharoor, who had to resign as minister two years back after being caught in the vortex of a controversy over the Kochi IPL cricket team.
As the politically-volatile state had its usual dose of controversies, the brutal murder of an ex-Marxist TP Chandrasekharan shook the entire state putting main Opposition CPI-M on the defensive as several of its local functionaries figured as accused in the case.
With the monsoon rains falling far short of the normal, the year turned out to be a hard one for Kerala and harder days are in store as it is heading to a grim power crunch and drought-like situation....
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11:11 AM, Dec 19, 2012
