Amit Shah: Left is dead, Congress on deathbed

From the word go, BJP president Amit Shah got his message carried across to his supporters at Paravur, once a hotbed of communist activity, in full force. “Bolo Bharat Mata ki jai,” Mr Shah started off, and asked the gathering of BJP and BDJS workers to repeat it. When he found the response did not meet his expectation, he told them to repeat it so loudly so that “it reaches West Bengal”. The crowd this time did not disappoint him: its voice may not have reached the other red land but rent the air which once reverberated with inquilab zindabad.

If Communism as an ideology has met with its death worldwide, the Congress is in its last leg nationally, the BJP president told the election campaign meeting of NDA candidates Hari Vijayan (Paravur) and K.K. Vamalochanan (Vypin) on Thursday. “And they fight the elections not on an ideological ground,” he said taunting the rivals. “Look, they are great friends in West Bengal. The only ideology that they share is the lust for power.” The people of Kerala never wanted to elect a UDF or an LDF government, Mr Shah theorised. “When you wanted to defeat one, the other crept in. Now you have a third alternative.”

Mr Shah’s Hindi speech seemed to have gone down well with the crowd which did not wait for the translation by former BJP state president V. Muraleedharan; it cheered him whenever he attacked the CPI(M) or the Congress. And Mr Shah minced no words: “When the UPA was in power, they filled the earth, water, air and even underground with acts of corruption. There was Adarsh scam on the land, Agusta Westland in the air, submarine in the water. They did not spare even the underground: there was coal scam.”

Knowing full well how important the BDJS is to meet the BJP’s goals in Kerala, the BJP president made it a point to mention the ally’s name ahead of his own party’s most of the time.

And he even chose to remind the 2,000-odd crowd that the cultural revolution great souls such as Sree Narayana Guru and Chattambi Swamigal enunciated in Kerala will be taken forward by Vellappally Natesan and other leaders. “The governments in the past 50 years, especially those of the Communists, halted the cultural revolution and its time the people chose the NDA to reignite it,” he said.

Mr Muraleedharan said Kerala for the first time witnessing a triangular fight in the assembly elections. BDJS president Thushar Vellappally and Surech Gopi, MP, also spoke.