BJP President Amit Shah on Tuesday kicked off a Padayatra (foot march) in Kerala against the reported violence perpetrated in the state by the ruling CPM dispensation.
During this Yatra, Amit Shah didn’t mince his words and outright blamed the current Chief Minister of the state Pinarayi Vijayan, for the political killings.
He stated that:
More than 120 BJP and RSS workers have been murdered in Kerala so far. CM Vijayan is directly responsible for it
This ”Jan Raksha Padayatra” of the BJP was launched in Payyannur of Kerala’s Kannur district which in the past has seen gruesome murders of RSS workers.
As recounted by J Nandakumar, an executive committee member of the RSS, a BJP worker named Ramith whose house was just a stone’s throw away from the Kerala CM’s home was brutally murdered by communists, last October. This wasn’t the only tragedy which had struck their family and the father of Ramith, too was killed by suspected communists in 2002.
Apart form there there have been various murders in the region which also include, two people being killed while they were returning from the funeral of Ramith’s father. J Nandakumar too claimed that Pinarayi Vijayan was fully aware of the political violence in the state but was doing precariously little to rectify it.
Coming back to the current story, this Padayatra by the BJP, would be passing through the state before culminating in Trivandrum on 17th October.
A day before the start of this Yatra, 3 BJP workers were attacked at Neeleswaram in Kasargod. This attack happened when the BJP workers were making preparations for the Yatra by decorating a part of the National Highway-66. The BJP Kasargod secretary claimed that claimed that the attack was carried out by about 20 CPM workers.
It remains to be seen if the BJP amplifies Amit Shah’s statement and even takes the legal route to try and file cases against those it claims, are murdering their workers. One thing is certain that after Amit Shah’s statement, the bloody history of atrocities against RSS workers in Kerala is again in the focus.
