The dawn-to-dusk general strike called by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday in protest against the murder of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday night assumed the proportions of a bandh in Kerala.
The capital, the epicentre of the ongoing BJP-CPI(M) stand-off, continued to remain on the edge as belligerent activists accompanying the bier of the RSS worker to the Municipal crematorium torched a scooter and destroyed CPI(M) symbols and flags on the funeral route.
Such sporadic acts of political violence were also reported from other parts of State, unusually some of it well after the hartal period had officially ended at 6 p.m.
The incidents triggered a tangible sense of unease among the public and were viewed as a forewarning of more violence to come.
The police have come under intense public pressure to restore peace. The Opposition had sharply berated it for having allegedly failed to prevent two back-to-back incidents of campus violence in the capital from snowballing into a State-wide face-off between the BJP and CPI(M).
The police were also accused of having lost local connect , which, arguably, has incrementally resulted in shoddy intelligence.
The measures taken by the State police to forestall the attacks on party offices and houses of leaders appeared, at best, half-hearted and belated to the Opposition, which has repeatedly called for peace.
Top police officials said they were bracing for more tit-for-tat attacks in the coming days. The undercurrents of the current round of political violence were hard to gauge and difficult to predict.
The possibility of outsiders getting embroiled in the fracas also could not be ruled out. They also awaited a political solution to the situation.
The CPI(M) has washed its hands of the crime stating that neighbourhood rivalries were the igniting factor. The BJP has strongly contested the ruling party’s claim.
The hartal, which was initiated with little notice late on Saturday, caught the public by surprise. Tellingly, hundreds of motorists were marooned for hours on the road when BJP workers blockaded Alappuzha town that formed a bottleneck on the arterial NH 47 linking Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi.
Citizens remained indoors and passed the better part of the highly strung Sunday tracking news on their television sets.
