Communist Party of India (CPI) State assistant secretary E. Chandrasekharan, MLA, appears to offer Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) a political cudgel to bludgeon the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)].
Mr. Chandrasekharan on Tuesday made a somewhat startling statement in the Assembly that seemed to play into the Opposition’s invariant narrative that the CPI(M) often enters into Faustian pacts with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for short-sighted political ends. An alleged BJP attack on Mr. Chandrasekharan and Left Democratic Front (LDF) workers during a victory lap after he won the Kanhangad Assembly election for the ruling front on May 16, 2016 lay at the heart of the politically barbed statement made under provision 228 of the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure and Conduct of Business.
The CPI(M) witnesses turned hostile during the trial at the Additional Sessions Court-II, Kasaragod, which led to the BJP suspects’ recent acquittal.
Secret covenants
The Congress highlighted the discharge of the accused as empirical proof of CPI(M)’s penchant for cynically striking “secret covenants” with their purported arch-enemies for political expediency.
The Opposition maintained in the aftermath of the verdict that the CPI(M) workers deliberately failed to identify the accused BJP workers in the courtroom as a quid pro quo for the Sangh Parivar’s reciprocal help in securing an acquittal for CPI(M) members charged with ambushing a few Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers in Kasaragod in 2018.
Mr. Chandrasekharan’s statement appeared to confirm Congress’s accusation. It also seemed to refute CPI(M) legislators K.P. Kunhammed Kutty’s contention in the House on February 2. Mr. Kutty claimed that the prosecution witnesses stuck to their original statement that the BJP orchestrated the attack. Nevertheless, they could not identify the suspects by name. Mr. Kutty said the imputation that the CPI(M) struck a secret deal with the BJP was false and politically motivated.
Mr. Chandrasekharan made a small concession to the CPI(M) by stopping short of explicitly identifying the political affiliation of the prosecution witnesses. He found rare support from the United Democratic Front (UDF) Opposition members, who greeted the statement with applause amidst a noisy protest in the well of the House. He had sought the sanction of the CPI State executive to present his case in the Assembly.
