The BJP will be hoping to keep the Sabarimala embers hot in Kerala when Prime Minister Narendra Modi opens the 13km Kollam bypass on Tuesday.
The CPM-led state government had earlier announced that chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan would inaugurate the bypass on February 2.
Although the state government had not formally invited the Prime Minister to inaugurate the bypass, it was clear that the BJP and Modi were using this “development project” to make political capital out of it. The bypass will help ease the traffic flow from the capital Thiruvananthapuram to the rest of the state through Kollam.
It is politically significant that Modi decided to open the bypass, a project equally funded by the state and the Centre, a day after the Makaravilakku, the most auspicious day of the Mandala puja festival at the Sabarimala temple.
The state BJP has been at the forefront of an agitation in the name of devotees to stall the entry of women of childbearing age into the shrine following the Supreme Court’s September 28 verdict that scrapped all age restrictions.
Since then, Kerala has witnessed rampant violence and over 10 forcible shutdowns by Sangh followers.
The state BJP had openly said the Sabarimala issue was a “golden opportunity” for the party to expand its base in Kerala, if not overthrow the Left government.
The BJP national president, many Union ministers and the Prime Minister in particular had egged on the state BJP by threatening overtly and covertly to dismiss the state government, though it was evident that the Centre would not dare to do so when a general election is due in a matter of months.
When asked, Modi had gone on record that Sabarimala was about tradition and triple talaq was a matter of gender equality.
The Left has been accusing N.K. Premachandran, representing Kollam in the Lok Sabha, of being instrumental in bringing Modi to inaugurate the bypass,
Premachandran has denied any such move on his part other than saying that since the state government was deliberately delaying the project he had requested Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari to open the project at the earliest. His party, the RSP, had walked out of the Left Front and joined the rival UDF just before the 2014 parliamentary elections.
The BJP has alleged that the state government was trying to take credit for the bypass while it was done with the help of the central government. Hence the party wanted Modi to inaugurate it.
The project opening will take place at Ashram Maidan. But more important, Modi will kick off the BJP’s election campaign in the state at an NDA event, 3km away at Peeranki Maidan. Other than voicing his concern for the rights of “Sabarimala devotees” and attacking the “political violence unleashed by the CPM”, Modi is sure to address expected core supporters from the Nair community.
The Centre’s quota announcement for the economically weak among the general category in government jobs and education is a long-standing demand of the Nair Service Society.
NSS general secretary G. Sukumaran Nair has written to Modi thanking him for initiating the move. This is seen as open support to the BJP and Modi is expected to go out of his way in wooing the community, thereby widening the existing divide between the forward and backward communities in the state.
