CPI(M) disinclined to pursue spat with Sudhakaran

Party has closed the chapter: Vijayaraghavan

Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] acting State secretary A. Vijayaraghavan said the party had drawn the curtain on the verbal tangle with Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K. Sudhakaran.

He said Mr. Sudhakaran had stepped outside the bounds of acceptable behaviour by personally targetting Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Mr. Sudhakaran had crossed a line. The party was constrained to respond in the same coin. The CPI(M) had closed the chapter. It was not inclined to revisit the issue.

When pressed, Mr. Vijayaraghavan said the CPI(M) had neither backed down nor advanced. It was not a question of which side blinked first, he said.

Mr. Sudhakaran had opened a Pandora’s Box of political slighting after he claimed in an interview that he had trounced Mr. Vijayan in a campus brawl at Brennan College in 1967. Mr. Vijayan rubbished Mr. Sudhakaran’s claim.

He said Mr. Sudhakaran profited from crime and had plotted to kidnap his children in the 1990s. Subsequently, CPI(M) leaders drew a bead on Mr. Sudhakaran and Congress workers rallied on social media to defend their president.

On tree felling

Mr. Vijayaraghavan said the previous Left Democratic Front government had issued an order permitting farmers to harvest valuable timber they had grown on their land. However, some elements had misused the order to fell endangered and expensive trees such as rosewood and teak. The government has constituted a special team to bring them to book. It has confiscated the looted timber. The racketeers had tricked some farmers into selling them valuable timber for a pittance. “The LDF was on the side of farmers. They were the victims,” he said.