Pinarayi Vijayan calls Rahul Gandhi an all-India leader, attacks Congress
Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Thursday targeted opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, calling him an all-India leader who lacks even the political understanding of a local party leader.
The Chief Minister’s remarks came a day after Rahul Gandhi alleged a “secret deal” between the CPM-led LDF and the BJP for the upcoming Kerala Assembly elections. “Despite seeing or experiencing what is happening around him, he will not learn anything,” Pinarayi said.
He pointed out that Rahul had demanded the arrest of former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, but Kejriwal was later acquitted. He further said, “Congress’s tough stance against the AAP helped the BJP. Congress became the BJP’s B-team in the Delhi Assembly elections, and the same happened in Haryana.”
The Chief Minister also called for a national-level non-BJP alliance to counter the saffron party, reiterating that the CPM has always been steadfast in opposing the BJP. Earlier, the CPM Politburo strongly criticized Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge’s inflammatory remarks against Pinarayi Vijayan and the party’s secular credentials, calling them baseless attempts to gain cheap electoral advantage in the assembly elections. The CPM asked Congress leaders to reflect on why its members in one state after another had deserted the party and joined the BJP, given that in Tripura, the entire Congress leadership had joined the BJP to defeat the Left Front in 2018.
It also stated that the people of Kerala, who have witnessed tremendous development and communal harmony under the LDF rule, will completely reject both the UDF and the NDA. Meanwhile, AICC General Secretary K.C. Venugopal claimed that Pinarayi Vijayan’s attack on Rahul Gandhi was meant to please Modi and Amit Shah.
Pinarayi and Satheesan engage in heated exchange on social media
Pinarayi also targeted V.D. Satheesan, the Leader of the Opposition in the Kerala Assembly, and shared a photo of him garlanding a picture of RSS leader Golwalkar at an event in his Paravur constituency in 2006.
He claimed that Satheesan had consistently avoided discussing the incident, which occurred just before the 2006 assembly elections, and said that in 2022, the Sangh Parivar group Hindu Aikya Vedi revealed that Satheesan had sought the RSS’s support in both the 2001 and 2006 elections.
Sathesan responded with an equally sharp Facebook post, accusing Pinarayi Vijayan of contesting the 1977 assembly elections with RSS support. He also shared photos of Harkishan Singh Surjeet, Jyoti Basu, and E.M. Namboodiripad with L.K. Advani and K.G. Marar to suggest that the Marxists had allied with the Sangh Parivar against the Congress.
Satheeshan listed several incidents to highlight the alleged Pinarayi-Sangh Parivar friendship. He alleged that it was Pinarayi Vijayan who took Governor Rajendra Arlekar to breakfast with Nirmala Sitharaman, signed the PM Shri program, which the Left opposed nationwide, derailed the investigation into hawala transactions involving Kerala BJP leaders and prevented a central probe into corruption allegations against himself and his family, sent the ADGP to meet RSS leaders, and disrupted the Thrissur Pooram celebrations to help secure the BJP’s first Lok Sabha victory in Thrissur.
Satheeshan further stated that the Congress, which has taken a strong stand against the RSS, does not need to listen to lectures from Pinarayi Vijayan.
