“Po mone Modi (Get lost, Modi),” Kerala had chorused after the Prime Minister had sought to school the state with an uncharitable comparison with Somalia in 2016. Now, the state’s communist dispensation has sent a team of bureaucrats to Narendra Modi’s home state Gujarat for a lesson in governance.

The ongoing visit to study an online administrative dashboard, coming on the heels of Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s meeting with Modi in New Delhi, has evoked ridicule and allegations of a CPM-BJP political bonhomie from the Opposition. Worse, it has given the BJP, struggling for long to gain a toehold in the southern state, an opportunity to gleefully point out that it was time to supplant the “Kerala model” with the Gujarat model”.

The “Kerala model” has for long been looked up to across the country when it comes to health care, state-run educational institutions, the public distribution system and human development indices.

The irony of the “Kerala model” now finding itself being uttered in the same breath as the “Gujarat model” that stands discredited in the aftermath of the communal progrom of 2002 has not been lost on many, especially since the Left itself has often been critical of Sangh politics.

The two-member team that is in Gujarat to examine the e-governance initiative related to the chief minister’s dashboard is led by Kerala chief secretary V.P. Joy. On Thursday in Gandhinagar, Joy described it as a “good and comprehensive system” to monitor delivery of government services and public feedback.

“We’ve seen the dashboard monitoring system. It is a good and comprehensive system for monitoring the delivery of services to the citizens and collecting their feedback and complaints,” the Kerala chief secretary told reporters.

He was accompanied by his staff officer N.S.K. Umesh. The team that left for Gandhinagar on Wednesday was to return to Thiruvananthapuram on Friday. The Gujarat government’s dashboard was set up in 2018 with technical support from the National Informatics Centre when Vijay Rupani was chief minister. The dashboard provides daily updates to the chief minister and his staff on over 3,000 performance indicators of about 20 government departments.

Sources in Kerala said the move to send the team to Gujarat was initiated by chief minister Vijayan after he met Prime Minister Modi in Delhi recently.

The chief secretary is expected to submit a report to the state government within a week on the possibilities of adopting such a system in Kerala.

Kerala Congress president K. Sudhakaran lampooned the chief minister for sending a team to study good governance from Gujarat, which he found to be an indication of Vijayan’s close relationship with Modi.

“The chief minister often boasts of Kerala being the number one state under his leadership. But this visit only goes to prove the close relationship between him and Modi and is further confirmation of the CPM’s understanding with the BJP to finish the Congress,” Sudhakaran told reporters when the government issued a circular announcing the Gujarat trip.

“The chief minister sent a delegation to Gujarat when the CPM central leadership has been vehemently attacking the Gujarat government and the BJP,” Sudhakaran added.

Kerala BJP president K. Surendran urged Vijayan to abandon the “failed model of governance” of the Left Democratic Front. “He should abandon the failed Kerala model and introduce the Gujarat model in Kerala,” Surendran said.

“The implementation of projects became a huge success in Gujarat because of their system. It can help Kerala as well,” he added.

The leader of the Opposition in Kerala, V.D. Satheesan of the Congress, asked when Vijayan would head to Delhi to study the Modi model of governance. “When is he leaving for Delhi to study the ‘good governance’ model of Modi?” Satheesan said, dripping sarcasm.

Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, a former bureaucrat who had served in Kerala, was among those who lauded the state government’s decision.

“Glad that a Kerala delegation visited Gujarat to study its data-driven monitoring model…. Many states have benefited from Kerala’s human developmental model. Similarly, in a large country like India, Kerala must learn from the best practices of other states. This is federalism,” Kant said.

Delegations from the Niti Aayog, Karnataka, Assam, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh are among those that have visited Gandhinagar to study the dashboard system.