An all party meeting held in Kannur on Wednesday for discussing the political fallout of the brutal murder of Youth Congress leader SP Shuhaib on February 12 by a Marxist killer gang and for finding ways to establish peace ended in a fiasco following a war of words between the Congress-led Opposition UDF and the CPI(M) after which UDF delegates walked out of the meeting protesting the decision to not invite people’s representatives.
After the meeting, Marxist law Minister AK Balan, who presided over it, said the Government was prepared to hold any kind of investigation into the murder for which two CPI(M) activists have already been arrested. Balan said the Government was ready to hand over the probe to the CBI if the Opposition was firm about it.
The meeting had begun on a peaceful note at the district collectorate at 10.30 AM Wednesday but soon the UDF came up with protest against the decision to not invite people’s representatives including MlAs to it. Balan explained to them that this was a meeting of the political parties and a peace meeting of the people’s representatives would be held soon.
UDF legislators KC Joseph and Sunny Joseph of the Congress and KM Shaji of the Muslim league reached the venue of the meeting to register their protest for not being invited to it.
“There have been several such meetings here and people’s representatives have never been kept away from those meetings,” said Shaji. Trouble intensified when the Congress delegates spotted CPI(M)’s Rajya Sabha member KK Ragesh sitting on the dais – in accordance with the protocol – though the meeting was supposed to be exclusively of political parties. Also, two CPI(M) delegates, including Kannur district secretary P Jayarajan, had already arrived for the meeting.
Balan tried to explain that Ragesh was at the meeting as a CPI(M) representative and he could be allowed to sit on the dais as a Parliament member.
The contradictory explanations from Balan further enraged the UDF members who insisted that Ragesh should not sit on the dais.
Jayarajan’s efforts to reply to the questions posed by the UDF delegates to the Minister triggered a war of words between him and Satheesan Pacheni, Congress’s Kannur district president. “Our questions are to the Minister who has convened this meeting and not to the CPI(M) leader. We will listen only to the Minister,” Satheesan said.
At the end of the heated arguments between Jayarajan and Satheesan, the UDF delegates walked out of the meeting by saying they did not want to take part in a meeting controlled by the district CPI(M) secretary, whom the Congress and the RSS-BJP consider as the chief architect of almost all incidents of Marxist violence in Kannur.
“Jayarajan was controlling the meeting. We thought Jayarajan would show some decency at least in an all-party peace meeting. The Congress will not participate in any meeting with people like Jayarajan who are plotting and supervising violent incidents. If we have to participate in a peace meet in the future, the Chief Minister should convene it,” Satheesan said.
Claiming that no peace meet had been held in Kannur without the participation of MlAs, KC Joseph, a former minister, said, “They decided not to invite MlAs because the CPI(M)’s legislators have to attend their party’s State conference in Thrissur (underway now). It means that the CPI(M) is not serious about the need of peace in Kannur.”
Despite the boycott by the UDF delegates, the meeting, in which nearly 40 leaders representing various political parties participated, came to an end by noon. Apart from Balan, Ports Minister Ramachandran Kadannappally, the Kannur district collector and the district police chief participated in the meeting.
Minister Balan told the media after the meeting, “They say we are intransigent. Where is the intransigenceIJ The police’s probe is progressing well. We have said we can have a special investigation team. We have also said that any agency, including the CBI, can probe this case if the Opposition so desires.”