Even while conceding that the two Youth Congress workers who raised slogans inside the flight carrying Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on June 13 were not drunk, LDF convener E P Jayarajan is still not ready to acknowledge that he had spoken a lie.
"Even if you were there, you would have said the same thing. They looked like they were drunk," Jayarajan told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday. Opposition Leader V D Satheesan, who was addressing the media at the same time in Kochi, insisted that a case be charged against Jayarajan. "He was the one who behaved like a drunk," Satheesan said.
Jayarajan said he had noticed something odd in the behaviour of the two men inside the flight. He hinted that their frequent visits to the toilets suggested that they were secretly getting drunk. "And they jumped from the seat just when the plane landed and the air hostess had to act stern to make them sit," Jayarajan said. "They were then rushing towards the chief minister," he said.
He said the airline should thank him for preventing an attack on the chief minster inside the flight. "If I had not intervened, the company would have lost face," he said.
In Kochi, Satheesan was in combative mode. "Jayarajan said that these two Youth Congress workers were in an inebriated state. But they did not bother to even test them," Satheesan said.
The Opposition Leader wondered how the police could slap an attempt to murder charge against the Youth Congress workers for merely shouting two slogans. "They did not have any bullets with them," he said. "Please don't force us to tell who carried guns and bullets through an airport," he said, referring to an incident in 2013 when, during an airport check, bullets were found in Pinarayi Vijayan's bag.
He said that if CPM was so outraged by the in-flight slogans of the Youth Congress they should not forget that it was the DYFI that poured tar oil on then Congress minister K V Thomas just when he got down from a train.
He pointed out an irony. When stand up comic Kunal Kamra was banned by three airlines for heckling journalist Arnab Goswami inside a flight, Satheesan said CPM secretary Sitaram Yechury had put out a tweet in protest. Yechury called it "anti-democratic and unconstitutional". "But now Yechury's party has clamped attempt to murder charges on Youth Congress workers who merely raised two slogans," Satheesan said.
The Opposition Leader said that the Congress would go ahead with its agitation. "We will not run away from anything. We are not cowards like the chief minister who hides under layers of police protection. We are not afraid of the criminal gangs unleashed by the CPM," he said.