'Family Affair?': Kerala Finance Minister's brother appointed State Finance Commission chief

Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 11 (IANS) Dr K.N. Harilal, the elder brother of Kerala Finance Minister K.N. Balagopal, was on Wednesday appointed the Chairman of the 7th State Finance Commission (SFC).

The main objective of the State Finance Commission is to review the existing financial conditions of the local bodies and suggest improvements in the augmentation of resources to match their responsibilities and to improve the delivery system to the public.

The appointment of Harilal was approved at the weekly cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Harilal, 63, retired as a Professor at the prestigious Centre for Development Studies (CDS) here in 2023, and during the previous Vijayan government, was a member of the State Planning Board member.

Doing his M.Phil and PhD from the CDS, he soon thereafter joined as a faculty there. Harilal is a student of two-time state Finance Minister Thomas Isaac, who quit his job as a Professor at the CDS and plunged full-time into politics in 2001.

Incidentally, while Harilal was a student at CDS, his younger brother and present Finance Minister Balagopal was a frequent visitor to his hostel room and became a close friend of Harilal’s then classmates.

While Harilal pursued Economics, Balagopal holds an M.Com degree as well as a postgraduate degree in law. When Harilal’s passion was economics, Balagopal rose in the CPI-M from the student ranks and rose to be the President of the CPI-M's student wing SFI and also its youth wing, DYFI.

During the tenure of V.S. Achuthanandan as Chief Minister (2006-11), Balagopal was appointed his Political Secretary. However, in 2010, he was given a nomination to the Rajya Sabha and had his first election victory after a string of losses in the 2021 Assembly polls by securing the Kottarakara seat. So now the elder brother will see how best he can make things easy by generating the much-needed revenue for his younger brother as Kerala is passing through a lean phase with the exchequer virtually empty and looking to the Centre for a fresh tranche of funds.

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