The BJP’s 15-day all-Kerala Jana Raksha Yatra against Jehadi and Red Terror concluded its four-day segment in Kannur, the State’s Marxist capital, on Friday after traversing several of the so-called party villages, considered so far as impregnable fortresses of the CPI(M) in the district.
Thousands of BJP activists and supporters participated in Friday’s 10-kilometre Padayatra from Panur to Koothuparambu, places in Kannur that had witnessed some of the worst incidents of Marxist violence against BJP-RSS workers. Union Minister of State for Water Resources Arjun Ram Meghwal inaugurated the Padayatra on Friday.
The Yatra being captained by State BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan will enter Kozhikode district on Saturday. The Kerala march was flagged off at Payyannur in Kannur on Tuesday by party chief Amit Shah, who had also led that day’s 9-km Padayatra from Payyannur to Pilathara. The march will conclude at Thiruva-nanthapuram on October 17.
The party workers who undertook Friday’s march were from Koothuparambu, Mattannur and Mahe (an enclave of Pondicherry) areas. Before the Yatra started, leaders and workers paid floral tributes to the RSS-BJP workers, including party’s former Kannur district secretary Panniyannur Chandran, who were martyred in CPI(M) violence in those areas.
The BJP Yatra, raising the slogans, ‘All Have to live’ and ‘Against Jehadi and Red Terror’, on Friday ended at Koothuparambu with a public meeting at the specially arranged venue named after KT Jayakrishnan, then State vice-president of the Yuva Morcha and a school teacher, who was murdered by a CPI(M) gang in the area in 1999.
Union Minister Meghwal, Kummanam and other leaders visited Jayakrishnan’s house and paid homage at his memorial. In one of the most brutal incidents of Marxist violence in Kannur, Jayakrishnan was hacked to death by a CPI(M) gang in a classroom of the East Mokeri UP School near Panur in front of his Class VI students on December 1, 1999.
Meghwal said that the CPI(M)’s ideology had lost its relevance, especially in the Indian context which provided no scope for political violence. “Intolerance is the hallmark of the Marxist party,” he said. Meghwal said he was confident that the Jana Raksha Yatra would pave the way for political change in Kerala.
BJP leaders said the Jana Raksha Yatra was the expression of Kerala’s protest against the violence perpetrated by the Marxists in Kannur and elsewhere in the State, especially against BJP-RSS workers. “This Yatra is the reply the peace-loving people of Kerala are giving to the CPI(M)’s politics of violence,” Kummanam said at the start of Friday’s march.
After visiting the house of Vadikkal Ramakrishna, the first victim of the CPI(M)’s brutality in Kannur, in Thalassery in the morning, Kummanam will lead the Jana Raksha Yatra through Kozhikode district on Saturday in a vehicle rally. Union Ministers Sadananda Gowda and Dharmendra Pradhan and other leaders are expected to participate in the Yatra on Saturday.
The Yatra will conclude on October 17 at State capital, Thiruvananthapuram, after covering 11 of the 14 districts in Kerala. Amit Shah may lead a Padayatra from Sreekaryam in the capital district, where RSS Karyawah Rajesh was brutally murdered by Marxist killers on July 29, to the venue of the concluding function.
At the same time, a war of words broke out between the leaderships of the BJP and CPI(M) over how effective the Yatra had been so far. While the BJP leadership claimed that no other party in Kerala could undertake such a massive march, especially in Marxist-controlled Kannur, the CPI(M ) alleged that the march had proved to be a huge failure on the first day itself.
“The CPI(M) leaders have lost their peace of mind due to the victory of this Yatra,” said BJP’s national executive member V Muraleedharan while reacting to State CPI(M) secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s comment that Amit shah had skipped Thursday’s Padayatra in Kannur because he had understood that the march had already become a wet cracker.