Kerala not fertile for communal forces: CM Vijayan
Vijayan thanked the people of the state and said the historic win will make him more responsible and rooted to the ground. He said he will resign on Tuesday ahead of the swearing-in of the new ministry after consultations with allies
Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday said Kerala “is not a fertile land for forces of hatred and divisive politics” while lauding voters for closing “the lone account” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state as the Left Democratic Front (LDF) appeared set to retain power in the state.
“We promised to close the single account of the BJP and we managed it,” he said, referring to BJP’s loss of the lone seat it won in Kerala in 2016. “In a state like Kerala which is sworn by amity and communal harmony such forces have no place. It is better for national leaders of the party to understand it,” Vijayan said.
He thanked the people of the state and said the historic win will make him more responsible and rooted to the ground. Vijayan said he will resign on Tuesday ahead of the swearing-in of the new ministry after consultations with allies.
The LDF was ahead or had won 97 out of 140 seats. It is set to be the first political formation to retain power in the state in decades. The Congress-led alliance led or had won 43 seats.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath were among the top BJP leaders, who visited the state, as part of the party’s aggressive campaign in Kerala.
Vijayan said BJP at one point said, it will form the government in Kerala. “Top leaders of the party raised baseless charges against the Left Front government and used central agencies to intimidate us. Where is the party now? It drew a blank,” he said.
In the outgoing assembly, O Rajagopal was the sole BJP lawmaker from Nemom in Thiruvananthapuram. The BJP fielded former Mizoram governor Kummanam Rajasekharan from Nemon this time. But he lost to V Sivan Kutty of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
BJP state president K Surendran lost the two seats he contested. Among BJP’s 113 candidates, E Sreedharan, the former managing director of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, gave a tough fight till the last round of counting. But he lost to Shafi Parambhil of the Congress by over 3,000 votes as he retained the seat.
Surendran said their vote share has gone up. “In many constituencies, we came a close second. We will analyse the results once details are out.”