Senior Congress leader and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala on Wednesday said the Congress agenda in the local body elections was to ensure the defeat of attempts of the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh combine to promote ‘hate politics’ in a peaceful State like Kerala.
Participating in ‘Vote Kariyam’, an interface programme organised by the Kesari Journalist Trust here in connection with the local body elections, Mr. Chennithala did not spare the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for its decision to field candidates who were facing criminal charges.
Mr. Chennithala said the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah team’s experiment of forging caste and communal forces to make electoral breakthrough would be defeated by the people of Kerala who were secular in outlook.
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The CPI(M) viewed giving tickets to Karayi Rajan and Karayi Chandrasekharan, both accused in the Fazal murder case, to contest in the elections as a sort of amulet. This only showed that the party leadership was neither repentant nor has learnt a lesson. The CPI(M) and the LDF will not be able to make any headway because of the degeneration that has set in their affairs. The CPI (M)’s encouragement for majority and minority communalism was responsible for providing the BJP the base to work on. He also opposed the cult of political violence promoted by the CPI (M).