CM Pinarayi Vijayan says a vote for Congress is an endorsement of BJP

Pinarayi Vijayan said elected Congress representatives and their present and former allies have had no qualms about defecting to the BJP at the drop of a hat.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan addresses a meeting in Kannur on February 24, 2024 | Photo Credit: The Hindu

On Saturday, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the electorate should consider a vote for the Congress might inadvertently end up as an endorsement for the BJP.

After laying the foundation stone of the Azhikodan memorial in Kannur, Mr. Vijayan said elected Congress representatives and their present and former allies have had no qualms about defecting to the BJP at the drop of a hat.

Mr. Vijayan questioned the secular credentials of the Congress. He projected the Left Democratic Front (LDF) as the sole bulwark against the Hindu majoritarian nationalist agenda of the Sangh Parivar.

He said the minorities watched the ascendancy of the RSS and its singular agenda to convert the country into a Hindu theocracy with trepidation. The Congress offered them no solace or protection and appeared ideologically little different than the BJP.

Mr. Vijayan conceded that the LDF was a minor player in the nation’s realpolitik. However, he claimed that the Left’s value-based, constitutional, and ideologically founded secular stance made it an outsized presence in the battle to preserve the country’s secular and federal principles.

Mr. Vijayan said the ideological line between Congress and BJP was startlingly thin.

Mr. Vijayan said Congress leaders in North India had contributed richly to the construction of the Ram Temple over the ruins of the Babri Masjid demolished by RSS karsevaks. In several Congress-ruled States, Ministers offered prayers to celebrate the temple’s consecration.

The Congress remained ambivalent about attending the Ram Temple consecration till the last minute. Congress leaders vied with BJP apparatchiks to offer prayers and fete the temple’s consecration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Congress has no clear stance on the Uniform Civil Code.

Mr. Vijayan said minorities were sons of the soil. Their right to live and die in their homeland was inalienable.

However, the rise of the RSS rendered them vulnerable, he said. The CPI(M) remained committed to upholding the country’s founding principles.

Earlier, speaking at an interaction with scheduled caste and scheduled tribe families in Kannur, Mr. Vijayan said the LDF’s good showing in the LSGI by-elections was an emphatic rejection of the Congress and BJP’s recriminatory campaign against the government.

He slammed the media for allegedly amplifying the lies broadcast by the Opposition parties.