Pinarayi asks secular parties to politically weigh anti-Sangh Parivar claims of Congress

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has urged secular parties, especially the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), to put the “questionable” claim of the Congress of being a more substantial bulwark against the Sangh Parivar than the Left forces on the political weighing scales. 

In an article written ahead of the 24th State conference of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] that begins in Kollam on Thursday, Mr. Vijayan cast serious doubt on the Congress’s ability to hold together a broad alliance of secular and regional forces against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) both at the national and provincial levels.

Mr. Vijayan said the Congress’s “unaccommodating go-it-alone mentality and disdain for tactical alliances with regional anti-Sangh Parivar secular parties” aided the BJP’s victory in the Delhi and Haryana elections. He said the Congress had not won a single seat in the Delhi Assembly since 2015. Instead of tactically aligning with the Aam Admi Party (AAP) to defeat the BJP, the Congress myopically chose to fight. “In the Timarpur constituency in Delhi, the Congress garnered 8,361 secular votes, facilitating the BJP’s win by a narrow margin of 1,268. The Congress’s quixotic political gambit played out destructively for secular forces in scores of other Assembly seats in Delhi,” Mr Vijayan wrote.

‘Self-defeating ways’

He pointed out that Congress’s abandonment of the cause to cobble together a broad electoral compact against the BJP had drawn criticism from the INDIA bloc leaders, notably Omar Abdullah and Akhilesh Yadav. Mr. Vijayan urged the Congress not to repeat its “mistaken and self-defeating go one’s way” isolationist approach in the upcoming elections in north India. 

“The Congress should realise that India was at the crossroads. It should work in tandem with the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal to stall the BJP’s aspiration to transform the country into a theocratic and totalitarian polity by garnering electoral heft to rewrite the secular and federalist Constitution,” he said. Mr. Vijayan slammed the Congress for “having no compunction in cynically aligning” with majority and minority communal forces to handicap the Left in Kerala. Moreover, he said the Congress was hand in glove with the BJP in Kerala to thwart the State’s development.

Mr. Vijayan said the Congress had paved the way for the Sangh Parivar’s ascendancy in the country by allowing Shila Nyas at Babri Masjid and later allowing Hindutva activists to demolish the mosque when the party was in power at the Centre in 1992.  He said the Congress had sided with the BJP to pull down the secular V.P. Singh government at the Centre in 1990.