BJP candidate in Malappuram N. Sreeprakash. ScreengrabMalappuram: Call it an April Fools' Day prank or the pressure of electoral politics, the BJP candidate in Malappuram has offered a steady supply of tasty beef across the constituency if he were elected as a Member of Parliament.
N. Sreeprakash made the strangest of all poll-time sops when he was questioned by reporters about his party’s ruthless persecution of beef sellers and beef eaters elsewhere in the country.
The BJP is facing an uphill task in Malappuram, the Muslim League bastion that goes to polls this month to elect a replacement for the late E. Ahamed. The CPM is the main challenger in the byelection.
Sreeprakash said that he would take the initiative to open decent stalls selling beef across the constituency. He said that the BJP was not against the people eating quality beef. "It would be an offense to butcher a cow in states which have banned beef. Many states had banned cow slaughter during the Congress rule," he said at a media interaction at the Malappuram Press Club.
People were even eating dead cattle in many states, Sreeprakash said, trying to dissociate himself from the beef ban politics of the BJP that would only lose him votes in Kerala.
A resurgent BJP at the national level has hardened its stance on cow slaughter.
Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh said that people who slaughtered cows would be sent to the gallows. Gujarat just made cow slaughter a non-bailable offense, building on legislation initiated by former chief minister Narendra Modi in 2011. Even the transport of cattle is an offense in the BJP-ruled state.
Uttar Pradesh has witnessed a crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses ever since BJP’s Yogi Adityanath took charge as chief minister.
