It was June 10, the first day of the 11th session of the 15th Kerala legislative Assembly. Congress MLA Roji M John had moved an adjournment motion seeking a temporary halt to the day's proceedings to discuss the alleged bar-bribery scam. The charge was that the government has asked bar owners for money to make changes in the excise policy.
Excise minister M B Rajesh reeled out a long list of comparative figures to show that it was the LDF government and not the Congress-led UDF government that has done more to discourage liquor consumption. The minister was essentially arguing that the charges were nothing but vindictive politics. In conclusion, Rajesh referred to a portion of Anand's highly acclaimed allegorical novel 'Govardhante Yathrakal' (Govardhan's Travels), which he said he had read as a student.
Search for the perfect neck
"Chaupat Raja is going around with a noose. He is looking for the right neck that would fit this noose. Like Chaupat Raja in Anand's novel, Kerala's opposition is also walking around with a noose. First, they tried the health minister's neck. (Veena George's personal staff was once falsely accused of taking a bribe last year).
They soon realised it did not fit her's. Now they have come and tried to fit it around the excise minister's neck. This too was found unsuitable. So they went after the tourism minister's neck. (It is alleged that Mohammad Riyas had encroached upon the excise minister's domain.) That too did not work," the excise minister said.
"For quite too long you have been walking around with this noose in your hands," Rajesh said, and then in a crafty reference to the media, the boogeyman the CPM habitually cites to explain away all its troubles, he said: "The ones who come up with noose-tightening headlines are waiting in the wings to tighten the knot of the noose you want to put around our necks." Rajesh told the UDF benches that there was no point scouting for necks on the LDF side. "The ones that would perfectly fit the noose are on your side," he said.
UDF's chief target
Before he wound up, and almost as an after thought, he alluded to Pinarayi Vijayan. "Ultimately, it is one particular neck that you want. It is on that neck that you have been trying to tighten the noose. But even after eight years of trying you have reached nowhere. So you keep wandering with your noose while we will employ facts to take on your charges."
Two kings: Satheesan's and Rajesh's
Opposition leader V D Satheesan took just seconds to take the excise minister down. Since the session began barely a week after the Lok Sabha results were out, Satheesan's words felt like a knock out punch.
It was at the fag end of his 'walk out' speech that the opposition leader came to 'Govardhan's Travels'. "You had said about Choupat Raja walking around with a noose," Satheesan said. "It is not we but the people who have come in the guise of the Raja and tied the noose around your necks. The noose looks to have tightened well," he said.
There was more to come. Pointing towards the Chief Minister, he said the Opposition's role was limited to telling the people that the king was naked. "When this king was strutting around in his new clothes, we had blurted out with the innocence of a child that the king is naked," he said. Now there were two kings. The voter. And two, the naked king.
UDF's embarrassment
Next day, on June 11, CPM's Koyilandy MLA Kanathil Jameela, bitter about Shafi Parambil's victory in Vadakara, was especially critical of RMP leader Hariharan's disgustingly misogynistic remarks against former minister K K Shailaja at a religious harmony event organised by the UDF in Kozhikode after the elections. She used Hariharan’s words as proof of the UDF’s sexist thinking.
"At the meeting, along with opposition leader V D Satheesan, was the RMP leader Hariharan who considers himself an intellectual. He referred to Shailaja Teacher in a vulgar manner. He had no respect for even her age. Not just Shailaja Teacher, he did not spare even Manju Warrier," Jameela said, while participating in a discussion on the Budget.
She said that UDF leaders including RMP leader and Vadakara MLA K K Rema had enjoyed Hariharan's remarks. "It would have been with great regret that people would have realised the folly of voting for the UDF," Jameela said.
Retelling Cinderella
When it was her turn to speak, Rema gave back in equal measure. She said that no woman should ever be insulted but the sentiment should not be forgotten when the CPM stands accused. Women are Cinderellas when victims are from the CPM but are daughters of the stepmother when violators are CPM men.
"When Alathur candidate Ramya Haridas was verbally abused by CPM central committee member A Vijayaraghavan (in 2019), I had not heard a word of disapproval from the other side. There is also no proof of the man having apologised for what he had said. When your own leader, a girl named Nimisha Raj (leader of CPI students' union AISF) was subjected to casteist slur by SFI leader Arsho, I did not hear any objections from the other side.
We have not heard him (Arsho) apologise either. But our organisation (RMP) has shown the will to disown such nasty comments. We also did not have any hesitation whatsoever to apologise. But whenever women were insulted by the CPM, we had never ever witnessed such boiling anger on the other side. When I was taken out in effigy and insulted publicly in the most crass manner, I failed to hear even a murmur of protest from the other side," she said.