As the West Bengal Assembly election dates draw closer, the political climate has started to charge up. While Bengal is seeing a hotly contested competition between TMC and BJP, the central leadership of the Congress is looking to find its footing by siding with CPM and other left parties. However, the prospect of CPM aligning with Congress has not gone down well with Kerala CM and CPM leader Pinarayi Vijayan who, in hushed tones, has given his seal of disapproval to the prospect of the unholy matrimony.
According to media reports, Vijayan persisted with his verbal attacks on the Congress scion Rahul Gandhi who is currently in his wanderlust mode, diving and swimming in the water bodies across south India and simultaneously disparaging the Vijayan government for the controversy surrounding contract fishing. Vijayan point-blank asked Mr. Gandhi as to what he was doing when his party kept losing one state after another.
“Rahul Gandhi is a prominent leader of the Congress party. Is he visiting any state where the Congress is directly fighting with the BJP? What role did he play in Goa, Manipur, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and the latest in Puducherry?” said the Kerala CM who further added, “Why is he silent about these states? Why is Rahul Gandhi, a national leader of Congress party shying away from the places where his party directly fights with the BJP?”
Kerala CM Vijayan took potshots at Rahul Gandhi for his touristy videos and sarcastically thanked him for giving a fillip to the tourism industry in the state.
“He (Rahul) is a good tourist. As a tourist, he visits various parts of the world. He may have gone to those parts of the world where the sea is calm and learnt to swim and may be he is an expert. But the sea here in Kerala is not like that. Thanks to his swimming episode in the sea, our Tourism department has got a boost. But now the inside stories of those episodes are coming out,” continued Vijayan with his monologue.
The Congress is the main opposition party in Kerala and an active challenge to Vijayan’s government which is led by the CPM. The CPM in West Bengal however, is a lost cause, desperate to remain relevant under the control of Sitaram Yechury. This has led to a turf war in the CPM with a dominant Kerala faction led by Vijayan on one end and Sitaram Yechury, the main communist ideologue of the party on the other.
Reported extensively by TFI, Puducherry was the latest Congress bastion to fall and it has seemingly given a whiff of hope to the BJP which is looking to bulldoze its way through in the southern region of the country. Puducherry could very well be the gateway for BJP and through it, the authority of LDF could be undermined in Vijayan-led Kerala and that of the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu.
Read more: Puducherry is PM Modi’s gateway to Tamil Nadu. And people’s response proves that
The CPM and Congress are yet to reach any seat-sharing arrangement and given the loud messaging being done by another Left leader in the form of Pinarayi Vijayan, it would be interesting to observe if Sitaram Yechury does decide to side with Congress or not. After all, it has been Congress’s sacrilegious history lately to take its alliance partners and their fortunes down the drain with itself. However, if the Brigade Parade’s ground rally was any indication, it appears that CM Vijayan’s criticism has come a tad too late for the CPM.
