"Leftists have good slogans but their ideas are impractical. Many years back, they had even opposed computers."

That is Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy's opinion of the opposition back home.

On a visit to Delhi, along with senior officers, to present the state's annual plan demands to the Planning Commission, he told mediapersons that Keralites now want change and are demanding development. They are unlikely to fall for Leftists slogans.

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The annual plan size of Kerala for the year 2005-06 has been fixed at Rs 5,369 crore.

The Congress-led United Democratic Front government is acquiring land to develop the Kazhakootam-Kovalam bypass as an IT corridor. Around 92 acres of land has been acquired so far.

"Our State is ready to compete with Karnataka and Tamil Nadu in the IT sector," State Chief Secretary Babu Jacob told rediff.com.

With only 15 months to go for the assembly elections and Leftists playing 'spoilsport', Chandy has been trying to change the image of Kerala as a state where strikes are routine and where Leftists calls the shots.

In a Powerpoint presentation, he told the media about the mass contact programme he had undertaken in all the 14 districts of the state. He received 96,901 petitions, out of which he had disposed off 42,152.

After he assumed office, he also cleared the backlog of files. Out of 125,000 files, 68,150 have been cleared while around 36,000 files are pending owing to legal issues.

In the last 100 days, 104 projects have been taken up.