After carrying out severe attacks for two days against Government chief whip and PC George for flagging off the Narendra Modi-conceived ‘Run for Unity’ marathon in Kottayam on Sunday, the Congress in Kerala on Monday found itself in a difficult situation following the disclosure that its own Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had met representatives of the Gujarat Government in connection with its plan to construct a giant statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
As per reports, Chandy had held discussions with a delegation of the Gujarat Government headed by its Agriculture Minister Babubhai Bhukeria on December 10 in his chamber in the State Secretariat in connection with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to erect a 182-metre Statue of Unity of Sardar Patel.
After these discussions with Chandy, the delegation had also met Home Minister Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan. The Gujarat delegation was in Kerala for seeking support for the erection of the proposed statue of Sardar Patel. Thiruvanchoor said the delegation was in Kerala not in connection with the plan for the Sardar Patel statue.
Incidentally, reports on the meetings between the Kerala authorities and the Gujarat delegation came out immediately after George challenged the Congress, which was demanding his resignation as Chief Whip for taking part in the Unity Run, to ask Chandy and Thiruvanchoor to resign for holding discussions with the Gujarat team.
The new reports have put the Congress and its allies in a difficult spot as they have been attacking George saying that his participation in the Run for Unity had amounted to promotion of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. George’s supporters said the disclosure proved the hypocrisy of the Congress.
Observers pointed out that it was a mistake on the part of the Congress to evade questions on the meeting between the Gujarat delegation and Kerala Ministers instead of justifying them as a matter of Government-to-Government interaction. “What is the harm in one State Government speaking to another democratically elected State Government IJ” asked a senior journalist.
Chief Minister Chandy said that the Gujarat delegation had not talked to him anything about the plan for the Sardar Patel statue. However, top Congress leaders tried to avoid discussions on these meetings while continuing to attack George in the name of the Unity Run.
The State Congress and some of its allies in the ruling UDF had asked Finance Minister KM Mani, chairman of George’s party, the Kerala Congress (M), to take action against him for flagging off the Unity Run and for unveiling a T-shirt carrying pictures of Narendra Modi. George is the vice-chairman of the Kerala Congress (M), third biggest constituent of the UDF.
George hit back at his critics saying that he had participated in the programme as an Indian citizen out of his reference for Sardar Patel, India’s Iron Man. He also said that it was improper to consider Modi, a state Chief Minister, as an untouchable but the Congress was unwilling to listen to his explanations.
On Monday, George, still showing no signs of giving in, said, “I don’t want to be controlled by anybody. If I have committed a mistake, I will correct it even if it is pointed out by a beggar. I don’t need Sonia Gandhi’s advice for that.” The Chief Whip has been critical of the Congress, its vice-president Rahul Gandhi and several of its leaders in Kerala for the past several months.
At the same time, speculations are rife that George’s appearance at the programme in Kottayam, of which the de-facto organizers were the district BJP leadership, was not an accident but part of a wider political strategy adopted by a major section in the Kerala Congress (M) with the knowledge and blessings of Mani.
Meanwhile, the State BJP said that the Congress and its ally Muslim league were creating an unnecessary controversy in connection with the construction of the Sardar Patel statue. State BJP general secretary K Surendran said that his party had no political considerations in the case of the Patel statue and unnecessary controversies would help only in blocking Kerala’s development.