Pinarayi Vijayan | Photo: PTI
Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday asked the media not to be "negative" even as he chided the Congress-led opposition for speaking without knowing facts of the trip that he and his ministerial colleagues undertook to Europe recently.
Meeting the media following criticism launched by the opposition about his recent foreign visit and its claims that no one has any idea of how the state had benefited from them, Vijayan, who had returned last week from the European trip, spent 45 minutes explaining the various meetings the delegation had in Finland, Norway, and the UK.
Seeming peeved when the first question was about the widespread criticism about taking his family members on the visit, he said: "This was not a pleasure trip and I am also surprised that the first question that came was with regards to the controversy. Why is there a negative vibe?"
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When the media pointed out that it was not them, but the Opposition which had pointed it out, Vijayan retorted: "If the opposition fails to understand it, you should not toe the line of the opposition."
"Wherever we went, we were surprised to find out that they had studied in detail about us... all of them hold our state in high regard and you should also understand that they are not Communists," he said.
The government has clarified that the cost of the family members were borne by themselves.
(With agency inputs)
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