The ongoing efforts to forge a united Opposition platform to take on the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections next year would have to leave out Kerala where the Congress and the CPM are arch rivals who won’t have any truck with each other.
With leaders of the Opposition parties converging in the city for their second meeting after Patna, one fact that has emerged is that all the deliberations would have to be made taking into consideration the ground reality in Kerala.
“We will have absolutely no compromise with the CPM in Kerala where we can never be part of the same platform and consequently no seat adjustment is practical here,” Kerala’s leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan told The Telegraph on Monday.
National leaders of the Congress and the CPM are among those set to engage in a daylong discussion over an anti-BJP Opposition alliance.
“Our rank and file will never be able to align with the CPM that has been targeting our workers and leaders in Kerala,” he said, alluding to cases against him, state Congress president K. Sudhakaran and a large number of party workers for participating in protests on issues ranging from corruption to the citizenship matrix.
While Satheesan was accused of illegally collecting foreign funds for his housing project after the 2018 floods, Sudhakaran was booked in a cheating case in connection with a fake antiques dealer and even arrested before being granted bail.
Traditional rivals in Kerala, Satheesan pointed out how that rivalry has been exacerbated after the CPM-led Left Democratic Front came to power under Pinarayi Vijayan.
“Pinarayi Vijayan’s CPM in Kerala has a clear anti-Congress position while (CPM general secretary) Sitaram Yechury is part of a team striving to form an anti-BJP platform at the national level. So the Congress will never be able to go along with the CPM in Kerala,” said Satheesan.