Letter to BS: Congress is playing second fiddle to BJP on Sabarimala issue

Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah recently launched an attack on the Pinarayi Vijayan government as part of his Kerala mission. His earlier attempts to kick-start his party’s fortunes failed. Implicit in his denunciation of the Left Democratic Front government as anti-Hindu is his party’s move to polarise people. The assertion of authority by the state government after the initial vacillation seems to have provoked the party to go all out at the Left government. It would seem that in Shah’s view, preventing women from entering Sabarimala is pro-women. It was significant that his visit coincided with the torching of the Salagramam ashram in response to its founder Swami Sandeepananda Giri backing to the Sabarimala verdict. Shah’s warning that Pinarayi government’s days are numbered was rightly viewed as a challenge to the will of the people of Kerala.

Shah’s apparent frontal attack on the state government which was merely trying to implement the Supreme Court’s order actually extended to the apex court. His advice to the country’s top court to pronounce only implementable verdicts is more likely to go unheeded. Shah seems to be not quite sure whether we are governed by the Constitution or the Manusmriti. The central government’s love for Kerala is so immense that it sanctioned Rs 5 billion for the reconstruction after this monsoon’s deluge while it needed 50 times more (approximately Rs 250 billion) and blocked foreign humanitarian aid. Congress is playing second fiddle to the BJP on the Sabarimala issue and morphing into a kind of saffron party.

G David Milton,  Maruthancode

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