With just ten days remaining for the crucial Kerala Assembly election, BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday opened the party-led NDA’s week-long mega campaign with scathing attacks against the Congress-led ruling UDF and CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF. Shah reached Kerala 24 hours ahead of the arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the election campaign.
“We are activists of the BJP. We don’t keep hidden agendas. We have only one agenda and it is clear. It is to defeat both the UDF and the lDF,” Shah said while inaugurating a BJP-NDA election rally in Ranni, Pathanamthitta district, in response to the allegation of a secret understanding between his party and both the fronts.
Giving a clear message that the BJP was contesting the Kerala polls this time not just to ‘open its account’, Shah said, “Kerala too has realised that the BJP should come to power for ensuring equal justice… The people have understood the hypocrisy of the Congress and the left.” Shah had four election programmes in the State on Thursday.
He said that the Congress’s MlAs and MPs were corrupt just like the Kerala Chief Minister and his Ministers. It had been established through the AgustaWestland chopper deal that even former Defence Minister AK Antony, Congress Working Committee member, was not exempt from this, the BJP president alleged.
“Antony should say at whose behest changes were made in the agreement. Why were the field trials of the helicopter shifted abroadIJ … Antony is saying that secularism in Kerala will suffer if the BJP wins. Our party is in power in several States but there are no communal problems in any of these States,” Shah said.
“law and order has collapsed in Kerala. Two Dalit students were raped and one of them was brutally murdered. So many days have passed since the heinous murder but the police have so far not been able to nab the culprits. The Chief Minister of the State owes an explanation to the people in this regard,” the BJP chief said at another rally in Kanjirappally constituency.
Meanwhile, elaborate arrangements have been made in Palakkad where Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to address an election rally on Friday afternoon, the first of his programmes in Kerala. About a lakh BJP workers are expected to take part in the rally at which all the 12 BJP-NDA candidates from the district will be present.
Reports from Delhi said that Modi might visit the mother of the 29-year-old Dalit law student who was brutally raped and murdered on April 28 when he arrives in Kerala for election programmes on May 11. He might also visit the house of the victim at Iringole, Perumbavoor where she was killed, it is said.
Several other senior BJP leaders including Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Venkaiah Naidu and Smriti Irani will be addressing BJP-NDA election rallies across Kerala in the coming days. Earlier, Union Ministers JP Nadda and Rajiv Pratap Rudy had supervised the ground works for the party’s election programmes by camping in Kerala.