Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan are trying to polarise Muslim votes in their favour by creating fear about the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) State president K. Surendran has said.
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Inaugurating the election committee office of the National Democratic Alliance candidate here on Sunday, Mr. Surendran said the Chief Minister was spreading the false notion that the BJP government was treating Muslims as second-class citizens. “This is a calculated attempt to flare up communal passion and make electoral gains out of it. On his part, the Opposition leader is maintaining a studied silence over the issue. At times, he even encouraged the Chief Minister to spread the false narrative,” he alleged.
Both the Opposition leader and the Chief Minister have gone to the extent of supporting extremism to garner votes. The government does not want the disrupted disbursal of welfare pensions, price rise of essential commodities, financial crisis, and atrocities committed by Students Federation of India activists on campuses to be discussed in the run-up to the election, he said.
Mr. Surendran, who is also the NDA candidate in Wayanad, termed Rahul Gandhi as a tourist MP who occasionally visited the constituency.
K.S. Radhakrishnan, the NDA candidate in the Ernakulam constituency, and party leader Narayanan Nambuthiri were among those who spoke.