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Can blame game actually end bloodbath in Kannur?

BJP mulls raising issue in parliament, as CPM plans to bring exhibition on violence to Capital

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Less than an hour's drive from where BJP's Koothuparamba candidate Sadanandan Master campaigned during the Kerala assembly elections this year was the home of KV Sudheesh, a CPM activist. Both were victims of Kannur's bloodthirsty eye for an eye political violence on the same day, two decades ago.

While Sadanandan master had lost both his legs, Sudheesh was killed in front of his parents. In the recent spurt of violence after the elections, the scoresheet of CPM and BJP on killings of their workers in Kannur district stand at three each.

The nearly five-decade old Kannur bloodbath seems all set to resonate louder in Delhi as the RSS-BJP and CPM spar over the violence and its history. The BJP plans to raise the issue in the winter session of Parliament beginning in November saying it was a "question of threat to life and liberty". The party has stepped up its campaign against its ideological foe saying killings of BJP and RSS workers had increased in the CPM bastion ever since the Pinarayi Vijayan government came to power. Meanwhile, RSS general secretary Bhaiyyaji Joshi, along with leaders Indresh Kumar and PVB Menon, visited families of the victims in the state, sources said.

The CPM is planning its own counter-campaign. In Kerala, the party is holding "jathas" and carrying out a campaign with pamphlets and history of the violence. Party sources said an exhibition on the violence against its cadre was likely to be brought to Delhi and all state capitals in November.

CPM leader Prakash Karat recalled how the violence began with clashes between beedi unit workers and owners in the late sixties. He said owners hired men from Karnataka, where the RSS had a presence. A decade later RSS shakhas came up in Kannur, a CPM bastion.

The RSS has its own version of the history of violence. According to RSS, it was in 1940s that it began work in the state and Left cadre disillusioned with communism started joining it. Briefing the media at the RSS meeting in Hyderabad on Monday, J Nandakumar said the first victim was Vaddikal Ramakrishnan, a tailor of Thalassery. He also alleged that chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan was involved in the 1969 murder.

The RSS asked the state and central government to take action against the perpetrators of violence and ensure the rule of law in Kerala prevailed.

The CPM polit bureau issued a statement on Tuesday saying the RSS has repeated its fabricated charge against the Left.

"Our party has said we are prepared to have talks to see that this violence ends," Karat said.

A BJP leader, however, said it was futile to talk to CPM. BJP president Amit Shah has repeatedly expressed concern about "attacks on his party workers in the CM's home constituency."

"We have demanded that government should make efforts to establish peace. We will expose CPM if they do not," said state BJP leader V Muralidharan.

CPM has listed five Left workers "assassinated" since Vijayan's victory rally in Dharmadam constituency after elections. The BJP has alleged that four of its workers have been killed since then.

For the BJP, which has made inroads into the state's electoral map for the first time, Kerala is one of the states that it has set eyes on in its mission 2019. A state leader said Shah has asked the party to target all 20 seats. A three-member party team headed by General secretary Bhupendra Yadav has submitted a report on Kannur violence from 1968, in which it said 82 of RSS-BJP cadre had been killed.

CPM suspects that BJP has a larger political motive of pinning down the LDF government over breakdown of law and order and taking it on in its bastions. Sources said violence had also surfaced in Trishur, where the Left won nine of the ten seats, but BJP got around 20,000 votes in every constituency, eating into the UDF vote.

A BJP leader said victims of violence had been mostly those who had changed their affiliations from the Left to the Right.

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