THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Onam is considered a celebration of unity. Ironically, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's Onam stricture seems to have worsened the political divide in a highly polarised Secretariat. The proposal to conduct a joint single-day celebration has been rejected by Kerala Secretariat Association, affiliated to Congress. "The proposal is not in the least welcome, especially at a time when our members are being irrationally, flouting all basic norms, transferred to faraway places including Mumbai and Delhi," said T Sreekumar, the general secretary of KSA.
"After the LDF came to power, the animosity that has been on show is unprecedented. Some of our top office-bearers are now in Thrissur and Kottayam. The onslaught has been planned to threaten the very existence of our organisation," he said. A KSA delegation had met the Chief Minister last month and told him of their problems. "He said he would look into the issues that we have raised but has still not done anything," Sreekumar said.
M S Bijukuttan, the general secretary of the CPM-affiliated Kerala Secretariat Employees Association, conceded that it would be difficult to conduct a joint celebration. "Yet, we will try to engage the Congress union in unofficial talks," he said. Sreekumar said that KSA would agree to any kind of talk only if the government agreed to bring back its main office-bearers. However, both the leaders said that the 'athapokkalam' was never done during office hours as the Chief Minister said.
"We finish laying the floral carpets before 10 a.m.," Bijukuttan said. Like in previous years, both KSA and KSEA will lay floral mats in separate floors in the Secretariat. Both will also organise cultural programmes on two separate days, on September 7 and 8. This means that even the CPM-affiliated KSEA would flout the Chief Minister's diktat not to hold Onam programmes during office hours, as the cultural fetes normally take up most of the afternoons.
