THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: BJP president Amit Shah lashed out at the CPM at the foundation stone laying ceremony of the new BJP headquarters at Mararji Bhavan here Sunday, saying each time when it comes to power, it is the BJP and RSS workers who are getting killed. He said it was not only the foundation stone of the party headquarters but for an NDA government in Kerala. BJP's former organising general secretary P. P. Mukundan was not invited. Mr Shah said BJP, which started off with 10 MPs as the Jan Sangh, has now evolved into a party of 11 crore members, but the CPM was not allowing it to function in Kerala.

“Our activists are mostly killed in Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s home district and his constituency. This year alone 13 BJP/RSS activists have been killed. If the Chief Minister believes that he can suppress us through violence, then it is their folly. Those who attack the BJP will be punished by law,” he said. The new headquarters of 50, 000 sq ft is coming up on a 55-cent property once owned by Congress leader S. Krishnakumar. In 1999, a trust headed by the then BJP president C. K. Padmanabhan bought the land at the initiative of P.P. Mukundan.

All trust members, O. Rajagopal, K. V. Sreedharan Master, K. Ayyappan Pillai and K. Raman Pillai, were present at the programme, except Mr Mukundan as he was not invited. Mr Mukundan told DC that a day after he wrote an open letter to state president Kummanam Rajasekharan, general secretary M. Ganesh, who is also an RSS nominee, had called him. “He asked me whether Mr Rajasekharan had not invited me personally while we had bumped into a programme at Kochi on May 27 which was organised by the BJP intellectual cell. So it is evident that despite the RSS leadership’s request to take me back in the party, he is not interested which explains why I have not been invited,” he said. Later, Shah had breakfast at BJP activist S. Ratheesh Kumar’s house in Thycaud as part of its ‘Saha Pankti Bhojanam’ (eating together) programme.

The other day Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had alleged that during his three-day trip to his state there, the state BJP leadership had that ensured they lunch they took with a Dalit family was prepared by an “upper caste” Hindu. After having breakfast, Mr Shah went to booth number 95 in Rajaji Nagar colony where an 89-year-old woman, Gomathi Amma, presented him with a pot filled with 36 lotuses and a shawl. He said in his speech that her blessing lifted his spirits. During the end of April when the state unit kicked off its fundraising campaign, Mr Rajasekharan was welcomed by women folks with Rs 50 notes and above catching him off guard as the area is a Congress stronghold. “There will be BJP presence in 80 percent of the booths in Kerala within a year,” Mr Shah said.