The one-and-a-half-month-old Left Democratic Front (LDF) government yesterday came under fire in the Kerala Legislative Assembly over political killings.
Congress Party-led opposition members protested “police inaction” against revenge killings by Communist Party of India (Marxist)), which leads the LDF, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Two men belonging to the traditional rivals in Kannur were killed on Tuesday in Payyanur town in Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s home district of Kannur.
O Rajagopal, the lone BJP legislator, joined a walkout by the opposition. He said homes, vehicles and establishments of BJP workers were under attack and the police remained mute spectators.
Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala led the walkout after Vijayan said the latest killing was in retaliation for the murder of a CPM worker, and the police had identified ten BJP assailants.
However, he did not reveal the identity of the alleged killers of the BJP worker, an auto-rickshaw driver, who was also a witness to another BJP worker’s murder earlier.
“The morale of the police is at the lowest ebb since you took over,” alleged Chennithala, the former home minister.
“The police in Kannur are now taking orders from CPM secretary P Jayarajan in the district. The parties that are in power at the Centre and in the state have turned the region into killing fields.”
He cited shifting out experienced officers, including former police chief T P Senkumar, who is on an extended leave challenging the decision, as one reason for the current spate of violence, which began immediately after the state elections in May.
He asked the chief minister, who also holds the home portfolio, to call an all-party meeting to ensure peace in the region.
More than 200 CPM and BJP cadres have lost their life here over the last two decades, including a schoolteacher who was hacked to death in front of students in his classroom.
Jayarajan is out on bail after being charged with the murder of a local BJP leader last year allegedly to avenge a 1999 attempt on his life which left him partially crippled.
Vijayan, however, termed the killings “isolated incidents” and asked the opposition not to generalise things. He said the police had taken the necessary steps to bring the culprits to book, and the situation was calm now.