BJP takes protest to highways

Waves black flag at Devaswom Minister over Surendran’s arrest

Kerala, Palakkad,18/11/2018. BJP Protesters Block National Highway at Kazhchaparambu junction on Sunday 18 November 2018. The Bharatiya Janata Party has declared Sunday as a day of protest in the state after a party leader was taken into protective custody while he was on his way to the hilltop shrine of Lord Ayyappa at Sabarimala. Photo: K. K. Mustafah.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday blocked national highways and main thoroughfares across the State for nearly two hours in the morning to protest the arrest of its State general secretary K. Surendran at Nilackal on Saturday.

The disruption came barely hours after a dawn-to-dusk hartal called by the party on Saturday to object to the arrest of Hindu Aikya Vedi leader K.P. Sasikala at Sabarimala on Friday night. The protest caused grid-locks, delayed travellers and forced motorists to take detours to reach their destinations.

BJP workers poured into the roads at 10.30 a.m., waving flags and chanting Ayyappa prayers. They staged sit-in protests on highways in Palakkad, Kozhikode, Kochi, Kollam and Thiruvananthapuram. The party fielded women in the forefront of their agitation. The line between the protests and prayer meetings was blurred at many places.

In Thiruvananthapuram, scores of BJP workers staged a black flag protest against Devaswom Minister Kadakampally Surendran at St. Mary’s Girls High School where the Minister had gone to inaugurate a development seminar organised by the Thiruvananthapuram city Corporation. The police removed the protesters and thwarted a confrontation between BJP and CPI(M) activists who were present in strength at the venue.

BJP workers blockaded the road in Kochi. BJP State general secretary A.N. Radhakrishnan said the party would harness the discontent of Ayyappa devotees against the government’s mulishness on the Sabarimala issue and turn it into a people’s movement against the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.

He said the party’s leaders would arrive at Sabarimala to express their solidarity with the cause of the pilgrims. Union Minister of State for Tourism K.J. Alphons is expected to reach Nilackal on Monday.

Stand-offs

The blockades led to stand-offs between activists and road users, including autorickshaw drivers and two-wheeler riders, in several parts of the State. In Kozhikode, the police had to throw a wall around a two-wheeler rider to save him from the wrath of BJP workers.

The BJP’s continuing protests appeared to have made the CPI(M) see red. CPI(M) State secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told journalists here that the BJP actions were akin to those unleashed by revanchist forces against the first elected communist government in Kerala in 1959.