CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan was sworn in as the Kerala Chief Minister last Wednesday and in this approving piece for Huffington Post, G. Pramod Kumar has said that Vijayan has begun well. Regular prime-time TV commentators too were unanimous in their opinion that Pinarayi’s team is the cleanest one could have hoped for.
But revelations about comments, allegedly made by Vijayan in the past, might take away from the current aura of goodwill around Vijayan.
According to a report in Deccan Chronicle, Congress MLA A.P. Abdullakutty in an article in the party mouthpiece ‘Veekshanam’ on Wednesday levelled serious charges on Vijayan. In the article Abdullakutty says that, while addressing a meeting in 2008 after five people were killed in CPM-BJP clashes in Kannur, Vijayan reportedly said," We should learn from Bengalis. They do it without shedding even a drop of blood. They kidnap people, bury their bodies in deep pit along with a sack of salt. The world never comes to know about the blood, photographs or the news about such killings.’’
Vijayan dismissed Abdullakutty's claims as baseless. “But there has never been an instance where I had to cite the experience of another region to evaluate the conditions here," he said on Wednesday. "That situation has never happened.’’
Without naming Abdullakutty, he added, “But the person who is saying all this now has never been part of any such situation at any stage. That’s all I can say at the moment.’’
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