Mattathur grama panchayat vice-president election signals Congress-BJP nexus, says Govindan

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] State secretariat on Friday said the strengthening Congress-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nexus in the crucial Assembly election year in the State was evident in the election of the vice-president of the Mattathur grama panchayat in Thrissur. 

CPI(M) State secretary M.V. Govindan said the BJP ward members backed the Congress candidate, electing the person to the post on the 78th anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Earlier, he said, Congress members had voted en bloc to elect a BJP candidate as the grama panchayat president. 

Mr. Govindan said the ‘unholy nexus’ was decades old, but the symbiotic relationship had assumed vital momentum ahead of the polls. “Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala, Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan, and former BJP State president K. Surendran had jointly sued the government for harnessing the expertise of big data firms to crunch medical data for successfully managing the COVID situation. The court threw out their defamatory contentions. Propriety demanded that the leaders tender a public apology for seeking to hoodwink Keralites,” he added. 

Mr. Govindan said the UDF had no coherent election manifesto or a vision for modern Kerala. Hence, the Congress-led alliance had resorted to Machiavellian tactics entailing a socially perilous Mephistophelean relationship with fundamentalist forces for votes. 

Apology sought

Mr. Govindan also demanded a public apology from Congress legislator Mathew Kuzhalnadan, who ‘relentlessly targeted’ Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his family on baseless corruption charges, until the Supreme Court dismissed his defamatory allegations. Mr. Govindan said the Congress wooed fundamentalist elements from either side of the religious spectrum, including the “Islamist” Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) for votes. 

CPI(M) State committee member and General Education Minister V. Sivankutty wrote on Facebook that Mr. Satheesan’s refusal to accept the challenge to contest the Assembly elections from Nemom constituency in Thiruvananthapuram was another tangible evidence of the Congress-BJP nexus in the State. 

Mr. Sivankutty had issued the challenge following a war of words between him and the Leader of the Opposition over the alleged complicity of the top Congress leadership in the Sabarimala gold theft case. Mr. Satheesan demurred, stating that he had represented his home ground in Paravur, Ernakulam, for five terms and it was too late to shift constituencies. 

Mr. Sivankutty alleged that Mr. Satheesan’s refusal signalled a covert alliance with the BJP. “Congress is poised to channel its votes to the BJP in Nemom, as it did in the 2016 Assembly elections, in reciprocation for the covert support of Hindutva forces in Paravur and other key constituencies,” he wrote.