The BJP on Wednesday approached the Election Commission to highlight the “series of targeted attacks” on its workers and supporters by the “CPI(M) activists” and asserted that the “atmosphere” in elec
The BJP on Wednesday approached the Election Commission to highlight the “series of targeted attacks” on its workers and supporters by the “CPI(M) activists” and asserted that the “atmosphere” in election-bound Kerala is “absolutely tense, turbulent and violent”. The party has been accusing the Congress-led alliance in the state of providing “strategic administrative support” to the Left party, which is using “violence” against BJP workers to “dampen their spirit”. The BJP had claimed that both the Congress and the CPI(M) are nervous of the saffron party’s growing stronghold in the state.
A delegation of BJP leaders, led by senior leader and Union health minister J.P. Nadda, submitted a memorandum to the Commission in this regard. Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and party general secretary Bhupendra Yadav were also part of the delegation.
While the BJP state unit, led by its president Kummanom Rajasekharan, staged a dharna in Thiruvananthapuram against the alleged “political violence” unleashed by the CPI(M) in the run-up to the Assembly elections, party MPs staged a protest in Parliament premises also. “The unabated and vicious attacks by the CPI(Marxists) activists on BJP workers are becoming more and more audacious, and a matter of grave concern,” reads the memorandum submitted by the BJP to the CEC.
It also mentioned some incidents of CPI(M) attack on its workers including that of Sujith, who was hacked to death in Kannur in front of his family. The memorandum also highlighted attack on its former state unit president and party workers by the “CPI(M) hooligans” in Thiruvananthapuram earlier this week “when they were leading a peaceful protest rally against the Congress-led UDF Government’s decision to revive a controversial master plan for redevelopment of the city.”
The BJP claimed attacks on its workers by the CPI(M) activists “puts a big question mark” whether Assembly elections would be “peaceful, free and fair.”
The party demanded that the EC should seek a detailed report from the concerned state authorities and accordingly, take necessary action and also provide proper security to the political workers of the BJP. It also demanded that sufficient paramilitary forces should be deployed to ensure free and fair elections.
