CPI(M) Kerala State secretary M.V. Govindan (file)
| Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT
CPI(M) Kerala State secretary M.V. Govindan has said defections to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have “enfeebled” the Congress and caused the public’s trust in the Opposition party in Kerala to plummet steeply.
Addressing a press conference at the AKG Centre in Thiruvananthapuram on March 8 (Friday), Mr. Govindan also made a robust Lok Sabha electoral pitch by portraying the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) as the “sole secular bulwark” against the Sangh Parivar’s alleged attempts to “divide” Kerala into communal lines and turn the State saffron.
Mr. Govindan said a vote for the Congress was tantamount to a referendum for the BJP. He accused the BJP of systematically subverting the Constitution to promote “a vicious brand of extreme Hindu majoritarian nationalism” that sought to relegate minorities, Dalits and backward classes to a subaltern status.
Mr. Govindan said the Congress felt increasingly besieged by the BJP’s recruitment sallies into the United Democratic Front (UDF) fold.
Without naming Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) leader N.K. Premachandran, Mr. Govindan said the UDF’s candidate in the Kollam Lok Sabha segment had a high-profile tete-a-tete lunch with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“The RSP’s MP who shared the same table (with Mr. Modi) is now in the BJP. The UDF candidate has repeatedly paid tributes to Mr. Modi’s politics. So, will he be late to the Sangh Parivar fold if he bags Kollam?” Mr. Govindan asked.
Mr. Govindan attempted to make a strong case that Kerala’s sizeable segment of anti-BJP votes should coalesce into the LDF to preserve the State’s “secular and democratic character.”
‘Similar ideologies’
“The UDF offers no refuge for minorities or secularists. Congress MPs and MLAs find it easy to defect to the Sangh Parivar without compunction because both entities almost share the same ideology. The Congress and the BJP pursue Hindutva politics in varying degrees and are staunch practitioners of neo-liberalism”, he said
Mr. Govindan said the Congress’s “putative candidate from the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency” (K. Muraleedharan) had sent a clear signal to the BJP by publicly defending the “UDF leader’s personal aside with Mr. Modi” and expressed interest in himself being invited to a similar luncheon with the Prime Minister.
Mr. Govindan said Mr. Modi “appeared confident” that he could win over Congress MPs elected from Kerala.
“It’s one reason the Prime Minister appeared confident that the BJP would win a two-digit number of MPs from Kerala. The BJP is supremely confident that it could at any time use inducements and threats to buy elected Congress persons”, Mr. Govindan said.
He claimed that 200 Congress MPs and MLAs, at least 13 former Congress Chief Ministers, and three Pradesh Congress Committee presidents had joined the BJP.
Mr. Govindan said the desertions had caused the scales to fall from the electorate’s eyes. “Voters now perceive the Congress’s actual colour unlike in the past,” he said.