Kerala Assembly Elections 2026: Satheesan accuses Pinarayi of being an RSS agent

Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan countered Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s charge of paying obeisance to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader M.S. Golwalkar by posting old sepia photographs of veteran Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] leaders, including EMS Namboodiripad, alongside Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) pioneers like L.K. Advani. 

Mr. Satheesan posted his riposte to Mr. Vijayan on his Facebook account minutes after the Chief Minister asked him to explain the “deal”, which “compelled” him to “genuflect” in front of Golwalkar’s photograph at an RSS event in Paravur in 2006. 

‘Clandestine links’

Mr. Satheesan said history reveals that the CPI(M) has had clandestine and illicit links with the RSS. “Mr. Vijayan is an RSS agent. The CPI(M) has sacrificed secularism at the altar of political expediency,” he added. Mr. Satheesan’s Facebook account displayed a photograph of the late BJP leader, K.G. Marar, pinning a badge on EMS’s shirt at a public meeting. He alleged that Mr Vijayan had won the 1977 Assembly elections with the help of the RSS. 

Mr. Satheesan noted that Marar was CPI(M) and RSS’s common candidate in the Assembly polls in Uduma constituency. “L.K. Advani participated in an LDF election convention for Sivadasa Menon in Palakkad,” he added. 

In 1989

Mr. Satheesan said the CPI(M) and the RSS had joined hands to derail the Congress government by supporting late Prime Minister V.P. Singh in 1989. He noted that the former editor of the RSS’s mouthpiece, Organiser, Balasankar, had stated that Mr. Vijayan had orchestrated the CPI(M)-RSS symbiotic relationship in the 2021 Kerala Assembly elections. 

He also accused Mr. Vijayan of parleying secretly with RSS leaders, using Sree M, a spiritual leader, as an intermediary. “Mr. Vijayan had no answer when queried about the meeting in the Assembly,” he said. 

Mr. Satheesan said Mr. Vijayan sang paeans to BJP leader and Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari when “the newly built stretches of the NH-66 in Kerala collapsed repeatedly.” Mr. Satheesan also spoke about dwelled on Mr. Vijayan’s breakfast meeting with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and the signing of the PM-Shri scheme for federal allocation for school education as examples of the CPI(M)’s “subservience” to the BJP.