A spell of Congress-sponsored and possibly aggressive street protests await the government as the Cabinet’s public outreach programme, Navakerala Sadas, enters the Thiruvananthapuram district on Wednesday.
The Congress will muster hundreds of workers to lay siege to 564 police stations across the State on Wednesday. It has activated 1,500 mandalam committees to mobilise five lakh workers across the State for the anti-government demonstrations.
The Congress hopes to up the ante in its stand-off with the government by following up on the police station siege with a mammoth march led by party legislators and MPs to the State Police Chief’s office in the capital on December 23. This protest would dovetail with the culmination of the Cabinet’s Statewide political odyssey, the Navakerala Sadas, in the capital on the same day.
The Congress would use both rallies to sharply direct its ire at Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. It has accused Mr. Vijayan’s personal security detail of unleashing wanton violence against KSU activists detained by the local police for waving black flag at Mr. Vijayan’s motorcade in Alappuzha district last week.
Viral video footage of the armed plainclothes officers stepping out of a vehicle, tailing the Chief Minister’s bus, and baton-charging the students detained at the spot by the local law enforcement had drawn intense public criticism.
The Congress had accused the squad of trespassing on the jurisdictional authority of the local law enforcement and assaulting political activists in police custody.
Mr. Vijayan stoked Opposition’s anger by stating initially that he had not witnessed the incident. Later, he changed tack and said the squad had acted well within legal bounds. He said an attempt to impede the cabinet’s progress portended a security threat. The circumstance wanted the security detail’s intervention.
Later in Thiruvananthapuram, the police used water cannons to disperse a Congress march to the officer’s house. The Congress has also sought to highlight the accusation that the police acted in tandem with SFI and DYFI activists to assault opposition black flag protestors along the CM’s route to Navakerala Sadas venues.
The CPI(M), in turn, has accused the Congress of turning its back on the State’s development and welfare. It has pointed out that Congress’s ire was against the Navakerala Sadas and not against the Centre’s crippling trespasses on the State fiscal federalism and Mr Khan’s jurisdictional overreach in Kerala’s higher education sector.
