Kerala’s CPI(M)-led lDF, which is struggling to find some reason for the sudden growth of the BJP in the State as seen in the outcome of the June 27 Assembly by-poll in Aruvikkara, on Tuesday accused the Congress-headed UDF Government of pursuing a policy of appeasing Sangh Pariwar organizations.
Raising the issue of the brutal murder of a nine-year-old Muslim boy in Kasaragod district on July 9 by a neighbour, who according to the Marxists was an RSS man, in the Assembly, the lDF charged Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his Government with efforts to protect Sangh Pariwar activists accused in various criminal cases.
Moving notice for an adjournment motion on the matter, Marxist legislator EP Jayarajan said that the State police were trying to protect the killer by projecting him as a mentally deranged person. Jayarajan, a central committee member of the CPI(M), alleged that the Home Minister was not even prepared to say that the killer was an RSS activist.
Class III student Muhammad Fahd of Kalliyode near Kanhangad in Kasaragod district was killed by neighbour Vijayakumar when he was going to school with two other children on the morning of July 9. The Kasaragod BJP has already stated that Vijayakumar, who had earlier been arrested for raising a false bomb alert on a train, had nothing to do with the party.
Replying to the notice for the motion, Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala said that neither the Congress nor the Government had any need to protect the RSS. In fact, the Congress had been vehemently opposing the BJP and RSS in the State, he claimed. “We have always taken strong stand against them,” he said.
Chennithala explained that the reason behind the murder was the enmity the accused had been keeping against the boy’s father and that the probe was progressing well. The Government would not allow any kind of political or religious interference in the probe and the accused would not get any consideration as a man with mental disorder, the Minister added.
Participating in the discussion, Opposition leader VS Achuthanandan accused Chandy of being loyal to the Congress and RSS at the same time. The withdrawal of the cases registered against VHP leader Pravin Togadia for hate speech and some ABVP activists for the attack on a police official were indications of the UDF’s policy of appeasing the Sangh Pariwar, he said.
The UDF Government had drawn flak from the left in November last year when it decided to withdraw a case registered against Togadia in 2003 for alleged hate speech in the backdrop of the Marad massacre. It was later proved that the case against Togadia had been dismissed by the court as early as in February, 2014 due to the police’s failure to submit the chargesheet in time.
When the lDF candidate was defeated by his UDF rival in the June 27 Assembly by-election in Aruvikkara, in which the BJP votes in the constituency had gone up by nearly 500 percent compared to the 2011 election, the CPI(M) had said that the defeat of its candidate was the direct result of a secret understanding between the Congress and the BJP. Similarly, the CPI(M) had accused the Congress of entering into a secret deal with the BJP last weekend after Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi appeared in the Supreme Court on July 10 for some Kerala bar owners against the interests of the State with clearance from the law Department of the NDA Government. The BJP chose to ignore the allegation.