KANNUR: BJP president Amit Shah will join his party’s Janaraksha Yatra in the northern red bastion of Kannur on Tuesday, putting the CPM on notice against “Red Terror and Jihad” and to assert the freedom of non-Left parties for political activities across the State. Mr Shah will address a public rally of 10,000 supporters, assembled from three Assembly constituencies of Kalliasseri, Payyannur and Irikkur, at 10 am. The party has planned the rally in such a way that it causes the least inconvenience to commuters.
Mr Shah, accompanied by party national organizing joint general secretary B L Santosh and Mr Nalin Kumar Kateel, MP, will flag off the rally, led by State president Kummanam Rajasekh- aran, at 3 pm. Mr Shah will walk along, for 9 km, up to Pilathara. Before the yatra, he will garland Gandhi statue at Gandhi Park. Part walking, part vehicle rally, the yatra would be by foot in the majority of stretches in Kannur.
Arriving at Taj Hotel, Kanhangad in the wee hours, Mr Shah is expected to perform darsan at Raja Rajeswary Temple on Tuesday morning before proceeding to Payyannur. The much-hyped yatra of Mr Shah through Pinarayi, the village of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the birth place of Communist movement in the state, will take place on Thursday. Mr Shah, who returns to Mangalore after Tuesday’s programme, will return on Thursday for the Pinarayi stretch.
The party has ensured the presence of 300 top-notch leaders, including CMs, union ministers and national level leaders for the rest of the rally. The rally, earlier due on September 7, was postponed following the Medical College bribery scam as well as factional feuds, according to political opponents. Mr Rajasekharan, who arrived in Kannur on Monday, told reporters that the leader of any party has right to walk through party villages such as Dharmadam, the Assembly constituency of the CM.
Top police officials, including ADGP (north) Rajesh Dewan, mounted a vigil. Kannur SP Siva Vikram G and IG (North zone) Mahipal Yadav inspected the venue of Mr Shah’s address. 600 policemen drawn from Malabar Special Police and Kerala Armed Police have been deployed under the supervision of 18 DySPs and 30 circle inspectors. In Bengaluru, Union minister Prakash Javadekar accused the CPM of "murder politics", claiming that it had become desperate due to the saffron party's growing popularity and had started state-sponsored violence against its workers.
"The CPM is doing murder politics in its desperation and people, including from the CPM, are joining the BJP. We will use democratic means to answer its violence," Mr Javadekar told reporters. As many as 120 BJP workers, 84 in Kannur alone, have been killed in the state since 2001 with 14 of them in the chief minister's home town since he took the reins last year, alleged Mr Javdekar. The CPM has, in turn, accused the BJP and the RSS of resorting to violence and denied the involvement of its government and leadership in political killings. The 'M' in CPM now stands for "Maoists" and not "Marxists", he claimed, accusing the party of using violence as a tool to suppress the saffron party.
"We are getting huge public support. It will be a historic march," he said. The march, which would be part on foot and part in vehicles, is being seen as the saffron party's push to emerge as a potent force in the state ahead of the Lok Sabha poll in 2019. Always a marginal force in the southern state, the BJP has steadily gained in strength there since 2014 Lok Sabha poll, when it fetched over 10 per cent votes, and got close to 15 per cent of vote share in the assembly poll in 2016. It won only one seat but it was its maiden entry to the assembly.
