Kerala is set to see an escalation in the BJP-CPI(M) political war with the former preparing to make the alleged CPI(M) attacks against its workers in the State, especially in Kannur district, a major item on the agenda of its national council meet to be held in Kozhikode from Friday and the Marxists devising strategies to defend the BJP move with extensive public relations and mass contact programmes.
The BJP’s plan is to take up the issue of Marxist violence in Kerala against Sangh Pariwar workers and party offices in such a way that it attracts national attention. There will be efforts at the meet to prove that BJP workers are being attacked by Marxists all over Kerala and to gain acceptance for its demand for a probe by an independent agency into the violence.
The discussions at the national council meet on the CPI(M) violence against BJP workers and offices will be on the basis of the report prepared by the special delegation of party MPs headed by national general secretary Bhupendra Yadav that visited Kerala as per instructions from party president Amit Shah.
The delegation had visited the houses of victims of the Marxist violence in Kannur, the State committee office of the party in Thiruvananthapuram on which a crude bomb attack took place recently and places where party property had come under attack. The team had also met Governor P Sathasivam to seek an impartial and fair probe into Marxist violence.
The national council is expected to dedicate a major portion of the political resolution to be adopted by the meet to the issue of the violence the Marxists have been allegedly perpetrating against BJP workers. The resolution will also strongly condemn the murderous violence the CPI(M) has allegedly been indulging in Kannur, known as Kerala’s Marxist heartland.
“The CPI(M) had started attacking our men in Kannur in the late 1960s. They have continued playing this politics of murderous violence till now. Just over two weeks ago, a BJP-RSS worker was killed in Thillankery near Iritti in Kannur. There should be an end to this,” said a senior BJP leader in Kozhikode.
According to the BJP, the top CPI(M) leadership has direct role in almost all the serious incidents of violence in Kannur district. “The murder of RSS Sharirik Shiksha Pramukh Elanthodath Manoj in 2014 was a typical example of this. The district leadership of the CPI(M) had direct involvement in that incident,” said the BJP leader.
The BJP is of the feeling that it is the CPI(M) which is preventing its growth in Kerala especially in a situation where the Congress had proved its political frailty in the last Assembly election. The BJP leadership hopes that the Marxist challenge can be overcome through a massive public relations offensive.
However, reports indicate that the CPI(M) has devised clear strategies to counter the BJP’s campaign offensive in the same coin. The plan is to explain to the people about the losses the party has suffered in terms of both lives of party workers and property due to attacks by RSS-BJP in Kannur and elsewhere.
“The BJP leadership’s bid is to divert public attention from the violence being perpetrated by the RSS in Kerala. The people are not going to accept any of the claims of the BJP and RSS until and unless they end their politics of murder,” State CPI(M) secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said the other day.
While the BJP is claiming that about 400 of its workers had come under CPI(M) attacks in the past four months, the CPI(M) is saying that over 300 of its workers had suffered injuries in RSS-BJP attacks since the Assembly election of May. “More than 35 party offices of ours had come under RSS attack in the last four months,” says Kodiyeri.
The BJP is confident that it can bring the issues related to the law and order situation in Kerala to the national attention while the CPI(M) hopes to defeat the BJP plans by upholding the lDF Government’s popular face and with massive public programmes. “The people are intelligent enough to see through the Sangh Pariwar’s games,” said a top Marxist leader from Kannur.