Thiruvananthapuram: After a series of murders involving the ruling Communist Party of India Marxist (CPM) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the past few weeks, the reverberations were on display in the state assembly on Monday.
Pointing out that the law and order situation in the state was a cause of concern, Congress Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) K Muraleedharan gave notice for an adjournment motion on the issue.
Muraleedharan said there had been 18 politically motivated murders since the CPM came to power in May 2016, 17 of which involved the CPM and the BJP. He also alleged that the BJP, which had been exposed in some corruption cases, had been given an escape route by the CPM through the series of violent incidents and murders.
Muraleedharan said the state governor was also not happy about the law and order situation in the state, which was why he summoned the chief minister and the state police chief to discuss the matter with them separately.
However, the Congress MLA added, if the federal BJP government was aiming to topple the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala using the governor, the Congress party would be the first to oppose the move.
The speaker turned down the request for an adjournment motion after chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan gave an explanation, which in turn led to vociferous protests by Opposition benches.
Meanwhile, the CPM-BJP war of words took on a more dangerous turn when BJP leader GVL Narasimha Rao said in Delhi that the CPM stood for “Communist Party of Murderers”.
Rao went on to accuse the Kerala chief minister of being the architect of CPM violence against the cadres of the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), adding that the chief minister was functioning “more like a chief murderer”.
To highlight the political killings in Kerala, federal minister for finance Arun Jaitley was in Kerala on Sunday. He visited the home of S Rajesh, an RSS functionary who was murdered recently, and said his killers had behaved more cruelly than soldiers of enemy countries do. BJP-RSS leaders have accused the CPM of Rajesh’s murder.
While Jaitely called on the family members of Rajesh, the CPM paraded family members of those allegedly killed by the BJP-RSS combine. The family members of the slain CPM workers protested in front of the Raj Bhavan and demanded that Jaitley visit their homes, too.
