The Communist Party of India (Marxist) Kerala State Secretariat on April 29 counselled Left Democratic Front (LDF) convener E.P. Jayarajan to sever connection with self-styled power broker T.G. Nandakumar.
However, it stopped short of reprimanding Mr. Jayarajan for stirring up an election day controversy by publicly admitting that he had met Bharatiya Janata Party’s State in-charge Prakash Javadekar, together with Mr. Nandakumar at his son’s apartment in Thiruvananthapuram last March. Mr. Jayarajan will continue as LDF convener.
CPI(M) State Secretary M.V. Govindan said the secretariat saw no wrong in party apparatchiks meeting leaders from rival political outfits. However, Mr. Govindan said such meetings in the company of “dubious persons” generated politically damaging optics and made the party leadership vulnerable to public criticism and Opposition attacks.
He said only lowbrow newspapers with a limited understanding of working class ideology would spread the word that a communist leader of Mr. Jayarajan’s stature and seniority would defect to the BJP.
The CPI(M) Secretariat perceived an entrenched plot by Congress and BJP leaders to besmirch the LDF’s staunchly secular campaign on election eve by almost simultaneously depicting Mr. Jayarajan as a prospective Sangh Parivar recruit.
Mr. Govindan said the secretariat tasked Mr. Jayarajan to seek legal recourse to bring the slanderers to book.
Mr. Govindan denied that Mr. Jayarajan’s public admission of his meeting with Mr. Javadekar had disadvantaged the CPI(M) on poll day and ceded a propaganda advantage to the Congress and the BJP. He said Mr. Jayarajan had come clean about the meeting to parry the Congress-BJP misinformation campaign.
Mr. Govindan dismissed BJP leader Shobha Surendran’s claim that the BJP had held talks with Mr. Jayarajan in Chennai and Delhi. He said Mr. Jayarajan did not require to report the impromptu meeting with Mr. Javadekar where no politics was on the table to the party’s leadership.
KPCC president K. Sudhakaran and Ms. Surendran had stirred up a controversy on poll day by claiming that Mr. Jayarajan had expressed keenness to join the BJP after the latter felt passed over for the post of CPI(M) State secretary.
The Opposition had seized on the statements to counter the CPI(M) campaign that Congress leaders were prone to defect to the BJP at the drop of a hat.
Mr. Jayarajan told reporters that the party was convinced of his guiltlessness. He said he was the victim of a vilification campaign designed to hurt the LDF.
