BJP president Amit Shah on Tuesday flagged off party’s Jana Raksha Yatra in Kerala against Marxist and jehadi terror at Payyannur in Kannur district by unleashing a scathing attack against the CPI(M) and its Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for killing of scores of BJP-RSS men in the State, especially in Kannur.
launching the Yatra by handing over the BJP flag to State BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan, who is captaining the 15-day march, Shah said this Yatra was not being held by the Kerala unit alone but by the 11 crore partymen in the country.
“I want to tell Mr Vijayan that the blood of 84 BJP men killed in your native district Kannur by your partymen is on your clothes. Who is going to answer for that bloodIJ If you can’t tell us who is responsible for these killings, we can. It is you, Mr Vijayan. You are responsible for these murders,” Shah said at the public meeting in Payyannur.
“There may be people who may ask why we have chosen Kannur to begin this Yatra. This is the district of the Chief Minister. It is the district of the State CPI(M) secretary (Kodiyeri Balakrishnan). It is also the district in Kerala that has seen the maximum number of deaths of RSS-BJP men in Marxist violence since the communists came to power,” Shah said.
Making it clear that the BJP campaign against Marxist terror would not be confined to Kerala, he said partymen would take out marches to AKG Bhavan, the CPI(M) headquarters in New Delhi, on a daily basis till October 17, and that the Yuva Morcha would organise protests at all State capitals in India.
“I want to assure the BJP leaders and activists in Kerala of one thing: The BJP will fight this war to the very end and it won’t stop till victory is achieved,” Shah said. The Jana Raksha Yatra will conclude in Kerala’s capital city, Thiruvananthapuram, on October 17 after covering 11 of the 14 districts in the State.
“Violence and murders have taken place in whichever State the CPI(M) has come to power. This is true about Kerala, in West Bengal earlier, and in Tripura. The CPI(M)’s violence can be stopped only by ending its supremacy in Kerala politics,” Shah said.
The BJP chief also lashed out at the human rights activists. “Why is it that you don’t consider the killing of our partymen by the Marxists in Kerala as condemnableIJ Are such incidents less seriousIJ You should shed your hypocrisy and intolerance,” he said.
“I want to tell the so-called human rights activists… Violence does not have any colour. That the perpetrators’ colour is Red does not give any sanctity to violence. We have lost more than 120 workers in Kerala. Why were they killedIJ Was it for working for this country and society and the ideology that they believed inIJ” he asked.
“It is time the Communists did some serious introspection. Why is it that their movement has disappeared on the global levelIJ Why is that they are getting weaker in the country as wellIJ The Congress also is fast disappearing in India while the BJP is now in power in 80 per cent of the country’s territory,” Amit Shah said.
The BJP president later took part in the Jana Raksha Yatra by joining the Yatris in the Padayatra (foot march) on its nine-km first leg from Payyannur to Pilathara. He will join it again on Thursday when it covers the stretch from Mambaram to Thalassery through Pinarayi, the native village of Chief Minister Vijayan.
Earlier, Shah offered paid floral tributes to the BJP-RSS workers who had lost lives in Marxist attacks in Kannur at the public meeting’s venue, named after Vadikkal Ramakrishnan, the first RSS worker killed by Marxists in Kannur in 1969, at Payyannur. O Rajagopal, BJP’s lone member in the Kerala Assembly, presided over the meeting.
The BJP chief also interacted with the families and relatives of these Balidanis. The 15-day Yatra, in which 300 permanent members including four State BJP general secretaries are participating, will take four days to cover Kannur district.