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Hundreds of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) workers marched to the Secretariat on Monday in a forceful bid to cast themselves as the only credible political opposition in Kerala, given what the ruling alliance at the Centre portrayed as Congress’s “strengthening symbiotic association” with the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] in the State ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
Inaugurating the protest, NDA’s State chairman and BJP’s State president K. Surendran said the State’s interest was the causality as the “so-called’ opposing Left Democratic Front (LDF) and United Democratic Front (UDF) alliances shadow-boxed through political disputes to cover up their mutual corruption and hoodwink the State’s electorate into thinking the “covert allies were foes”.
Mr. Surendran said the CPI(M) and the Congress further closed ranks against the BJP following Rahul Gandhi’s expulsion from the Lok Sabha after a court found the latter guilty of defaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi. A Congress-CPI(M) axis had failed to dislodge the NDA government in the recent Assembly elections in Tripura.
Mr. Surendran appeared keen to dispel the CPI(M) narrative that the next electoral battle in Kerala was between the UDF and the LDF and that the NDA was a political non-entity in the State.
He suggested the CPI(M) opposition to the Modi government would translate into tacit electoral support for the Congress and Rahul Gandhi in the parliamentary elections in Kerala. Only the BJP offered a credible alternative to the clandestine “LDF-UDF” axis.
Mr. Surendran raised issues relating to livelihood, corruption, economic development, Brahmapuram fire, women empowerment, policing, unemployment, and human rights, focussing on commandeering the Congress-led Opposition’s political space in Kerala.
He also signalled that minority votes were no more the fiefdom of the LDF or the UDF. He said the Church’s “pivot” to the Modi government to solve the rubber sector crisis alarmed the opposing alliances. The Congress and the CPI(M) saw the red in the amicable engagements between Hindu and Muslim social organisations nationally.
BJP State vice-president K. Padmakumar presided. BJP national executive member P.K. Krishnadas, National Kerala Congress State chairman Kuruvilla Mathew, RLJP State president M. Mehaboob, Socialist Janata president V.V. Rajendran, and Kerala Kamaraj Congress State president Shyam Laiju were among those who spoke.
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