The Economic Times Reports

This is an agreement which will be hugely detrimental to the interests of the agriculture sector in the state. The decision by the Centre to go ahead with it without looking into the fears of Kerala is not right,” said Kerala chief minister V S Achuthanandan. Earlier this month, Mr Achuthanandan had met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and conveyed the apprehensions of the state over the FTA. “Mr Singh had promised to give us a copy of the text of the FTA. But we haven’t received it yet,” he said.

According to earlier plans, Mr Singh was to sign the agreement with other heads of state during the Asean Summit in October. But this last minute change of plans indicates that the government did not want to take any chances with the FTA and wanted to sign it as early as possible.