K. Sudhakaran, MP and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president, said here on Saturday that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s allegations against him were aimed at diverting attention from the controversy over illegal tree-felling in the State. He challenged the Chief Minister to prove the allegations.
Mr. Sudhakaran, addressing a press conference at the District Congress Committee (DCC) office in Kochi on Saturday, said he would produce any number of former students and teachers of Government Brennen College, Thalassery, to disprove the allegations made by Mr. Vijayan. (Earlier, in response to an interview given by Mr. Sudhakaran to a media outlet, Mr. Vijayan had made a reference to a fracas in the college, where he and Mr. Sudhakaran were contemporaries.)
‘Off-the-record statements’
Mr. Sudhakaran said there were political differences among various groups of students in the college then, but no violent actions were planned. He claimed that parts of the interview that appeared in a magazine had been disclosed to the reporter ‘off the record.’ Mr. Sudhakaran blamed the reporter for not keeping the promise that the remarks would not be published.
The Congress leader said allegations like plans to kidnap Mr. Vijayan’s children were absolutely false. “Why were no complaints lodged with the police in this regard then,” he asked. Mr. Vijayan had stooped low to make allegations against him and the Congress and he would not retort in the same manner.
He said that the Chief Minister, in levelling allegations against him, had gone off the script prepared by the public relations agencies engaged by him. “It was a case of the Chief Minister speaking in his own style,” Mr. Sudhakaran said.
The BJP alliance
The Congress leader alleged that the Chief Minister’s allegations of the Congress being in cahoots with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent Assembly elections were misleading. “Mr. Vijayan’s first election victory in Koothuparamba, in 1971, was achieved with the help of the then Jan Sangh, the predecessor of BJP,” he said, adding that the CPI(M) had an understanding with the BJP in the recent Assembly elections.
On the tree-felling row, he said the Congress was not against farmers’ interests, but would oppose those who took undue advantage of Revenue Department orders on tree-felling.
