Terming the Congress “the most ideologically confused party”, Communist Party of India [CPI(M)] Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat has said that a vote for its candidate may not help in the fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
She was opening an event organised by pro-Left women’s organisations in support of K.K. Shailaja, Left Democratic Front (LDF) candidate for the Vadakara Lok Sabha constituency, on Monday evening. A large number of women took out a rally seeking votes for Ms. Shailaja ahead of the event.
Questioning Rahul Gandhi’s decision to seek a re-election from Wayanad, she wondered why wasn’t he contesting the election from Uttar Pradesh (UP) if the intention was to fight the BJP and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
“If you want to fight the BJP-RSS, go to UP where your constituency is. Why come to Kerala where the LDF hasn’t given any space to them. Why come to fight Annie Raja, the LDF candidate, a representative of the women’s movement?”, Ms. Karat asked.
She also questioned the logic of Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal’s candidature from Alappuzha. “The Congress has brought a Rajya Sabha member from Rajasthan, who has still three years left for the completion of his tenure. If he wins the election, the Congress will lose the seat as the party is not in power there. The BJP will get one more seat in the Rajya Sabha. What is the logic?”
Ms. Karat also sought to know why the Congress brought Shafi Parambil, its Palakkad MLA, as the candidate for Vadakara, saying why was he running away from fighting the BJP in his segment.
Meanwhile, the CPI(M) leader claimed that there was no single voice in Parliament for women’s rights in the past five years. The rate of crimes against women had gone up by 28 per cent during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s tenure. “Every hour, at least 50 women face crimes against them in our country. Every day on an average, 88 women face a sexual assault or rape. Every year, 7,000 women are burnt to death on an average. In the past 10 years, the numbers would be more than the soldiers who got killed in all the wars that India has fought,” she added.
