The 15-day all-Kerala Jana Raksha Yatra of the BJP against ‘Jehadi and Red Terror’ will conclude at the State capital, Thiruvananthapuram, on Tuesday after a ten-kilometre Padayatra and with a public meeting. Top national leaders including BJP party chief Amit Shah, who had flagged off the march, would take part in Tuesday’s Padayatra, party leadership said.
State BJP leaders termed the Yatra as a huge success and said that the tens of thousands of people who had joined it in the past 14 days and had accorded reception to it at various centres were proof of Kerala’s craving for an end to Marxist terror and peace.
The Yatra has already covered ten of total 14 districts in the State and Thiruvananthapuram is the eleventh.
Apart from Shah, several Union Ministers, national leaders, Chief Ministers of the BJP and almost all top State leaders of the party would join the ten-kilometer Padayatra from Sreekaryam, where a Marxist gang had murdered local RSS leader Rajesh of Kallampally on July 29, to the Putharikandam grounds in the capital city on Tuesday, party leaders said.
The Padayatra, in which at least 50,000 people are expected to take part, will leave Sreekaryam at 3.00 PM after a visit by top leaders including State party president Kummanam Rajasekharan, who is captaining the all-Kerala march, to the houses of Balidanis Kallampally Rajesh and Mannanthala Ranjith.
Union Minister Pon Radhakrishnan will inaugurate the Padayatra at Sreekaryam and Shah will join it at Pattom in the capital city. The party president will also greet workers and common people from an open vehicle. He will take part in the public meeting to be held as part of the concluding ceremony of the Yatra at Putharikandam.
Kummanam said, the brutal attack on RSS leader P Nidheesh (32), Mandal Karyawah in Muzhuppilangad, Kannur on Sunday evening was a proof of the determination of the CPI(M) not to give up violence. “This attack proves once again that the CPI(M) is a terror outfit. Terror is part of their blood. They cannot abandon it,” he said in Kollam.
Two persons, allegedly CPI(M) workers, had hacked Nidheesh at Muzhuppilangad beach in the legs while he was angling from a bridge there. He has been admitted to the Government Medical College Hospital in Kozhikode with serious injuries. Doctors said on Monday that his wounds were serious but he was out of danger.
local residents said the beach area in Muzhuppilangad was not a place known for RSS-CPI(M) clashes though no area in Kannur was immune to political violence. No major incidents of violence had been reported from the region in recent past, they said, adding that they now feared the possibility of escalation in violence.
Amit Shah flagged off the Jana Raksha Yatra, which has also been raising the slogan, “All Have to live”, on October 3 at Payyannur in Kannur where the BJP-RSS had opened a ‘political refugee camp’ — the first of its kind in India — for people affected by Marxist violence. Shah had then participated in a 9 km Padayatra from Payyannur to Pilathara.
The Padayatra on the second day from Keechery to Kannur city was led, apart from Kummanam, by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. The Yatra, which took four days to cover Kannur district, infamous as Kerala’s political killing field and Marxist capital, had also passed through CPI(M) fortress Pinarayi, native village of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
Amit Shah was expected to take part in the Padayatra through Pinarayi but he skipped it as he reportedly had to attend some urgent meetings in Delhi. In its attempt to take the campaign against Marxists to the national level, the BJP has been taking out marches since October 4 to AKG Bhavan, the CPI(M)’s national headquarters in Delhi.
However, the spirit and enthusiasm seen at the Yatra had failed to reflect in BJP’s performance during the Assembly by-election in Muslim-majority Vengara constituency in Malappuram district held on October 11.
The BJP, which had claimed the third place here in the 2016 election, was pushed to the fourth position in the by-poll.