Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] acting State secretary A. Vijayaraghavan said on Friday that the United Democratic Front (UDF) had expanded its alliance with religion-based parties in the Assembly polls.
Voters had rejected the UDF in the local body polls after it was caught red-handed kowtowing to the Jamaat-e-Islami and its political arm, the Welfare Party of India (WPI).
The UDF, at the instance of the IUML, continued to press on with the relationship. The WPI propped up Congress presidents in scores of panchayats.
The line between the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had become increasingly thin.
The Congress Ministers in Puducherry had defected to the BJP. Sangh Parivar brand of Hindu nationalist politics was not anathema to the Congress any more. The Congress had assembled a motley crew of centre-right Hindu groups and borderline Islamists to defeat the LDF in the Assembly polls.
In contrast, the CPI(M)’s political line was firmly moored to secularism and unflinching. The party faced the elections with a strong focus on social welfare, infrastructure development, education, health, agriculture, environment, gender equality, social liberty and improvement in general quality of life. The UDF had no comparable plan.
The Congress leaders attacked Mr. Vijayaraghavan for injecting an angry tenor of Islamophobia into the election campaign.
UDF convenor M.M. Hassan said Mr. Vijayaraghavan’s rant against the IUML was indicative of the tacit understanding the CPI(M) had struck with the BJP. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan should state whether the IUML, which partnered with the CPI(M) in 1964 to share power, was a fundamentalist outfit.
The BJP’s plot to render the Congress politically irrelevant appeared to have found takers in the CPI(M) State leadership. The Centre had back-pedalled the multiple investigations into the gold smuggling case to politically aid the CPI(M).
KPCC president Mullappally Ramachandran, working president K. Sudhakaran and AICC general secretary K.C. Venugopal condemned Mr. Vijayaraghavan’s “attack” on the IUML. Mr. Venugopal said in Kalpetta that the CPI(M) and the BJP were the opposite sides of the same coin.
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