In a major setback to BJP’s ambitious Jan Raksha Yatra, which began in Kannur on Tuesday with a war cry against the CPM, party chief Amit Shah has cut short his programme. Shah was back in the national capital on Tuesday itself.
Although there is no official confirmation about his return to the state, party sources said Shah is unlikely to take part in the march (padyatra) on Thursday, which is scheduled to pass through Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s hometown.
Neither the BJP’s media cell nor the state unit leaders have given any reason for his absence from padyatra on Thursday. On Wednesday, the BJP president was expected to attend programmes in Mangalore, which, too, were cancelled.
While some state leaders said Shah’s programme has been cancelled, others said he might join the public meeting scheduled to take place in Thalassery in the evening.
Sources in the BJP described the curtailing of the trip as “rescheduling” and added that the party president will be present on the last day of the fortnight-long campaign on October 17, where he is scheduled to attend the concluding ceremony in Thiruvananthapuram.
Some state BJP leaders blamed it on “bad planning”, while some rumours cited Shah’s health as a reason for cutting short the programme — they said the party president should not have walked the entire stretch on Tuesday.
Shah walked nine kilometres on Tuesday, from Payyannur to Pilathara, where he addressed a public rally.
Shah’s decision to skip the padyatra would be a major embarrassment to its Kerala unit and its president Kummanam Rajasekharan who is leading it from Kannur to Thiruvananthapuram covering 11 of the state’s 14 districts. The padyatra, with the theme ‘All Have To Live: Against Jihadi-Red Terror’, is part of the campaign of the BJP and its ideological parent RSS to “expose the political violence against their workers in the state by the Communists”.
Significantly, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath also participated in the march on Wednesday, where he raised the issues of ‘love jihad’ and terrorism, which, the BJP claimed has been supported by the ruling Pinarayi Vijayan-led CPM government.
Meanwhile, Shah’s march has been ridiculed by Communist leaders in the state. On Thursday, the Malayalam mouthpiece of the CPM, Deshabhimani, carried stories of atrocities against Dalits, rapes and protests by farmers in BJP-ruled states and raised a question: “Is this BJP’s Janaraksha?”
Shah’s absence is likely to make the CPM camps upbeat with local party leaders claiming the BJP chief had left the battlefield ever before the war has begun.
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