Youth Congress workers trespass on Health Minister Veena George’s official residence, lay funeral wreath to protest “increasing medical negligence”

A set of Youth Congress workers stormed the official residence of Health Minister Veena George early on Saturday (February 21, 2026), catching the Thiruvananthapuram City Police unawares and eliciting strong protest from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)]. 

The protest occurred minutes after Ms George left to attend a function in her constituency, Aranmula, in Pathanamthitta district, at around 7.15 a.m. 

The protestors broke open the gate, surprising the two officers on guard duty, placed a funeral wreath at the front door of the house and staged a sit-in protest on the verandah. Subsequently, a large police posse from the Cantonment police station rushed to the spot and arrested the workers. 

The City Police Commissioner, K. Karthick, has ordered an enquiry into the intelligence failure and lack of preparedness on the part of the local law enforcement. 

The police have booked the agitators for criminal trespass, destruction of public property, and obstruction of government officials in the discharge of their duties under the relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Samhita (BNS). They will soon produce the subjects after a medical examination at the Judicial First Class Magistrate Court-III in Thiruvananthapuram. 

The trespass on Ms George’s residence was the latest incident in the escalating Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) campaign against the Left Democratic Front (LDF) following the startling discovery of an artery forceps in the abdomen of a woman who underwent surgery at the Government Medical College Hospital, Alappuzha, in 2021. 

The Health Department had come under severe criticism after the woman’s family alleged that the medical college authorities failed to investigate her post-operative distress properly, despite paying alleged backhanders to the surgeon. The woman is due for a remedial surgery at a private hospital in Ernakulam. 

Ms George has assured the patient’s relatives that the government would underwrite her medical expenses. The Director of Medical Education, late Friday (February 20, 2026), suspended J Shahida, the gynaecologist who performed the surgery and the attendant staff nurse, P.S. Dhanya. The government also constituted a four-member team of specialist doctors to investigate the matter. 

Senior Congress leader Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan said the Youth Congress had protested to highlight the decline of the public health sector in Kerala. He said the situation had most disadvantaged ordinary citizens, who could ill-afford specialised care in expensive private hospitals. 

Ms George termed the medical negligence as a one-off event. So far, there have been 43 incidents of such one-off events in publicly funded hospitals. Deaths and injuries caused due to medical negligence are the norm in Kerala’s public health sector”, Mr. Radhakrishnan said. 

Former Health Minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] Central Secretariat member, P.K. Sreemathy, termed the mode of protest villainous. “The Congress attacked a woman holding high office at her official residence. Ms George escaped by a whisker”, she said. 

CPI(M) State Committee member and General Education Minister V. Sivankutty accused Congress of resorting to theatrical action to promote a false narrative about Kerala’s storied health sector to mislead voters ahead of the Assembly polls.