The Kerala BJP on Saturday launched its agitation over the bar bribe scam involving Finance Minister KM Mani with the determination to cash in on the situation where the beleaguered Congress-led ruling UDF is steadily losing credibility due to graft charges and the CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF, for some mysterious reasons, seems reluctant to take a convincing stand on such issues.
The start of the BJP’s agitation was marked by a Yuva Morcha march to the Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram demanding ouster of Mani from the Cabinet, resignation of the UDF Government which was protecting him and a CBI probe into the scam, against which the police unleashed violence resulting in the hospitalisation of four Morcha activists with injuries.
Apart from the march, the BJP is also holding panchayat-level torchlight demonstrations across Kerala and will observe a State-wide shutdown on Tuesday over the issue while the reaction of the left to the scam has been allegedly soft as reflected in its decision to launch its agitation as late as on February 3 and that too with a rather “formal” protest march to the Secretariat.
According to observers, the bar bribe scam has presented the BJP with the exact situation it has been waiting for because it gives it the opportunity to argue that it is the only credible alternative the Keralites have got as the ruling coalition is drenched in corruption while the CPI(M) is in a secret pact with the Congress-led UDF as reflected in its reluctance to launch a massive stir.
This was exactly the message State BJP president V Muraleedharan tried to give out while inaugurating the Yuva Morcha march on Saturday. “This is an agitation by the people of Kerala. The BJP has no MlAs in the State but we have full trust in the people who want to live the rest of their lives here - not in this corruption-ridden Kerala but in a clean Kerala,” he said.
“The left has the support of 65 MlAs in the Assembly but outside they have no support of the people… And Chief Minister Oommen Chandy should not hope of completing the remaining one-and-a-half years of his term comfortably in the State Secretariat with the secret support of the CPI(M),” he said.
Observers say that the current controversy may also give the BJP the opportunity to begin efforts for realizing its ambition of not just “opening account” in Kerala but ultimately capturing power as the controversy has cropped up right at the time for starting preparations for the civic polls to be held in September.
“There is no wonder if the people tend to believe in the BJP,” said a senior journalist of a pro-Congress paper. “Even after so many evidences have come out to support the charge against Mani, the Congress seems to be protecting him. The Marxist reaction is merely formal and namesake,” he said.
Finance and law Minister Mani, chairman of the Kerala Congress (M), third biggest constituent of the UDF, is facing the charge of taking crores of rupees as bribe from bar owners and “selling” Budget proposals in advance for money to interested sectors like jewelers and rice millers by offering tax relaxations.
The State Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau is probing the charge against Mani on the basis of disclosures made and evidences produced by bar owner Biju Ramesh. Biju has handed over as evidence to the Vigilance 152-minute-long voice recordings in which bar owner’s association leaders are heard discussing details of bribe paid to Mani.