A core committee meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Kerala unit here on Monday decided to remove Sandeep Warrier as party spokesperson.
Briefing mediapersons after the meeting, BJP State president K. Surendran sought to sidestep repeated queries about the surprise move. “It is strictly an internal matter of the organisation and I do not want to share it with the media,” he said.
Party sources said Mr. Warrier, who was in Kottayam to attend the meeting, returned by Monday afternoon upon learning about the move. They attributed the decision to a long-simmering factional strife within the State unit of the BJP.
Meanwhile, Mr. Surendran criticised the foreign trips undertaken by Ministers along with their family members and sought clarity on their travel expenses and actual objectives. The State, according to him, has not benefited from any of the foreign trips by its Ministers, including the Chief Minister, since 2016.
“The Chief Minister and his Ministers have failed miserably in attracting industrialists or investments to the State from their foreign trips. At the same time, the neighbouring States have succeeded in their respective endeavours in this direction, making it part of their efforts to tide over financial crisis,” he said.
Mr. Surendran also launched a scathing attack on the perceived attempts by a section of political parties to draw the cadre of the outlawed Popular Front of India (PFI) to their respective organisations.
“While the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) has extended an open invitation to the PFI cadres, the CPI(M) has given an ideological excuse for doing the same. The widening drug-trafficking networks should also be viewed in connection with the current developments as terrorist organisations use drug-trafficking as their source of revenue,” he alleged.
The BJP’s recently-appointed Kerala prabhari (in-charge) Prakash Javadekar inaugurated the meeting, while his deputy, Radha Mohan Agarwal, was also present.
