The Kerala CPI(M) on Wednesday announced that the ruling lDF it leads will hold a State-wide Jana Jagrata Yatra from October 21 with the objective of organising people against the BJP-RSS even as the State CPI(M) chief, Marxist Chief Minister and the Congress party unleashed scathing criticisms against the BJP over its Jana Raksha Yatra which had concluded on Tuesday.
The lDF’s Yatra was intended at resisting the misinformation campaign allegedly being carried out by the BJP as seen during its Yatra and isolating the BJP-RSS from the people, State CPI(M) secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said in Thiruvananthapuram. For this, lDF leaders would meet the people by touring through all the 140 constituencies in the State, he said.
“The provocative and lie-laden campaign certain Union Ministers and Chief Ministers of the BJP had carried out here (during the Yatra) was intended at disrupting the peaceful life of Kerala. It was also a violation of the federal principles… With this, the double face and hypocrisy of the BJP have once again been unmasked,” Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in a Facebook post.
Referring to the challenge BJP president Amit Shah had thrown the other day at the CPI(M) to compete with his party not in violence but on the issue of development, Pinarayi said, “We happily accept that challenge. let Amit Shah make it clear whether any of the BJP-ruled States has made any progress that is comparable to the achievements made by Kerala.”
Stating that Kerala had a secular mind and that the agenda of the BJP was that of communalism and hate, the Chief Minister said, “Kerala has nothing to learn from such a BJP and the RSS which controls it. That is why the Keralites have rejected the march that the BJP held with war cry and campaign of lies against this State.”
At the same time Kodiyeri claimed that the CPI(M) had no intention of using violence for opposing the violence of the BJP-RSS. “The RSS – not CPI(M) – is responsible for Kerala’s political violence which had worsened after 1970. Since then, 216 CPI(M) workers had been murdered in the political violence of the RSS in the State,” Kodiyeri alleged.
Terming the BJP’s Yatra as a fiasco, Kodiyeri said, “The BJP’s effort has been to sow anarchy in Kerala but the people here have rejected that bid. Therefore, Amit Shah, who had flagged off his party’s Yatra at Payyannur like a lion, got transformed into a mere mouse when the march concluded in Thiruvananthapuram.”
Kodiyeri alleged that BJP’s top leaders including Union Ministers and Chief Ministers used their Yatra for carrying out a misinformation campaign against Kerala on its soil. He went on to say that Amit Shah was trying to pose himself as the messiah of peace while he was standing smeared with the “disgusting mud” of murders.
“They are saying Kerala is similar to Pakistan. They accuse Kerala of being Jehadis’ land. They say that Kerala is being ruled by rogues. This was said by the Goa Chief Minister. We had thought of him as an educated person but we are now forced to think otherwise. However, that campaign has failed to influence Keralites,” he said.
The Congress also unleashed an attack against the BJP on Wednesday. Opposition leader in the State Assembly Ramesh Chennithala said that the massive drop in the votes polled by the BJP candidate in the October 11 by-election in Vengara Assembly constituency compared to the 2016 election proved that the BJP had no future in Kerala.
“The outcome of the Vengara by-poll has proved beyond doubt that the BJP’s lotus cannot bloom any further in Kerala. Only secular forces can grow here. Amit Shah can hold as many Yatras as he wants but it will be of no use,” he said. BJP candidate K Janachandran had got pushed to the fourth position with just 5,728 votes in the Vengara by-election.