BJP to take on CPI(M)-led govt.

Union Minister of Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu inaugurating the State council meeting of the BJP in Kottayam on Wednesday.

The State unit of the BJP has finalised an action plan directly taking on the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front government in a three-month-long chain of agitations against the perceptible failings on the food security front and politics of violence. The party has also drafted a well-crafted strategy to dislodge the CPI(M) from its Dalit-Adivasi plank by seizing the opportunity to penetrate the segment by grabbing the leadership of land struggles which the CPI(M) has been hesitant to champion.

The agitations will be set in motion on Thursday, less than 24 hours after the finalisation of the action plan, when Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha activists will confiscate rice from a Food Corporation of India godown at Kozhikode. The agitation will continue till January 25.

Another war front

The party will open another war front against the CPI(M) on January 24 when State chief Kummanam Rajasekharan visits activists at the Gavi land struggle. The State council of the party, which concluded its meeting here on Wednesday, identified 18 centres of land struggles where the landless, mostly Dalits and Adivasis, were engaged in struggles, most of them independent of one another, as the mainstream political parties, especially the CPI(M), had failed to extend leadership to their struggles.

In most cases, the landless have been provided with papers by succeeding governments, but none had provided them the land, said Mr. Rajasekharan. It is not because of dearth of land with the government. Large areas of land are usurped by private parties even after their lease period had ended. In addition, there are puramboke land in the hands of the government. “It’s a question of political will,” he said.

Politics of violence

The party has also decided to take on the CPI(M) on the issue of politics of violence. The BJP will take the ashes of a party worker who lost her life in an alleged attack by CPI(M) cadre in Palakkad district in two yatras. One taking the ashes to Kasaragod and another taking it southwards. The yatras have been scheduled for the last week of February.

Attack on cultural icons

In an apparent effort to mend the damages suffered by the party following criticism from cultural icons of Kerala following the tactless views expressed by one of its general secretaries on film director Kamal and later against M.T Vasudevan Nair, the party has called a meeting of its own cultural leaders “who are ready to criticise the CPI(M)” at Thiruvananthapuram. Mr. Rajasekharan, however, maintained that along with these agitations the party would focus its attention on strengthening the organisation at the booth level. The booths numbering about 22,000 would play the key role in the emergence of the party as a viable alternative, he said.