THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Mayor V.K. Prasanth, told DC, that what happened on Saturday was an attempt on his life and the Corporation would take action against those who were allegedly at fault. But BJP councillors should first apologise, he said. “The BJP is a political party which works in a democratic system. They should not have manhandled the Mayor, who was also democratically elected, and made an attempt on his life. They should first apologize,” he said.
He said that while every party – be it the UDF or BJP – had democratic ways to register a protest by staging a dharna or conducting a gherao, what happened on Saturday could not be justified. “As the council meeting got over, and I was returning to my chamber, there were quite a lot of people to block the way. There were at least four RSS workers who have been accused in criminal cases on the stairs. One of them is an accused in 9 criminal cases. BJP’s V.G. Girikumar caught hold of my legs. This could only have been a premeditated attempt on my life,” he said.
He said that he would be consulting legal experts to take disciplinary action against the offending councillors, and that police had also registered a case against them. However he reiterated that they should first apologise. On Sunday morning, through a Facebook post, he had said that the BJP councillors attacked as they were angered by the progress the Corporation made – being the first to introduce the EPR at a T20 match, winning smart city and achieving 76 per cent expenditure. Meanwhile, he has been moved to the pay ward at the Government Medical College Hospital. It is learnt that it might be two more days before he would be discharged. CPM councillor Rasiya Beegum and dafedar V. Mohanan Nair were discharged on Sunday.
