Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Comrade’s ‘killing’ remark puts Kerala CPM in the soup :- 28.5.12-TOI


Thiruvananthapuram: A Freudian slip from a districtlevel leader has embarrassed the CPM. The party’s Idukki district secretary M M Mani’s remark that the CPM would never hesitate to kill its political rivals has created ripples across the country.
    “Yes, we have killed the enemies of the CPM. We have shot, stabbed and beaten them to death. A hit-list of party enemies was prepared and each of them was executed in that order,” said Mani, a close confidant of CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, at Manakkad in Idukki on Friday night.
    On Sunday, the CPM went into damage-control mode. State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan said Mani had violated the party policies by making such a statement. “It was wrong. He shouldn’t have made such a statement. I had urged the leaders earlier to avoid public statements. I’m repeating again that the leaders should avoid making controversial statements in public,” he said.
    Pinarayi alleged that there was a calculated effort from various quarters to attack the party. Claiming that the CPM has itself often been at the receiving end of violence, he said, “The party has never encouraged political violence and we have not grown by political killings.”
    CPM leader V S Achuthandandan rubbished Mani’s remarks, saying that the latter’s revelations about three political murders committed by the CPM in Idukki in the 1980s were untrue.
    “I was the state committee secretary then and Mani was not even a district level leader. Hence, I can say with authority that the CPM hadn’t committed any such murders,” VS said.
    Gujarat CM Narendra Modi said the CPM was speaking the language of terrorists. “When leader of a political party says that we murder our political rivals, it is dangerous to our democracy. Where is NHRC? We should raise our voice against such acts. Our workers keep giving their lives in Kerala,” Modi said in Ahmedabad on Sunday.

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