Thiruvananthapuram, In an example of out-of-the-box thinking, Communist Party of India cadres in Idukki district committee have come up with novel ideas to collect money for the Kerala Chief Minister's Relief Fund without unnecessarily burdening the doners.

Under the initiative kick-started by the Idukki unit, a 'pickle challenge' has been devised, wherein activists of the party's women's wing will make pickles and sell the same to collect money.

Under another initiative, the youth and student wings of the leftist party will collect old newspapers and notebooks from various households and sell these to scrap dealers, collect the money, and hand it over to the party leadership.

"There are 9 party committees in the district. We all thought about how best we could raise money without taxing people much. So, we decided to come up with the idea of the 'pickle challenge'. Another idea is to collect old newspapers and notebooks and sell these to scrap dealers. By June 5, we plan to raise minimum Rs 10 lakh," CPI District Secretary K.K. Sivaraman told IANS.

"Anyone who is interested can make pickles at their homes. We will go and collect the product and sell it in the district to those who want it. We plan to sell 500-gm pickles at Rs 50. Pickles will also be made available in 250gm and 1 kg packings. The CPI Peerumade committee plans to raise Rs 2.50 lakh in this manner," Peerumade CPI legislator E.S. Bijimol told IANS, pointing out that the mango season was on and plenty of raw mangoes were available in the district.