Thiruvananthapuram: Ajay Krishnan married Megha in a splendid ceremony held in a replica of Mysore Palace built for the occasion in Thiruvananthapuram. Senior Congress leaders including Rajya Sabha deputy chairman P J Kurian and Vayalar Ravi MP greeted the couple but state leaders were conspicuous by their absence at the marriage of the son of former minister Adoor Prakash with the daughter of Biju Ramesh, the businessman who led a campaign against the former UDF government.
The wedding venue, with a replica of the Akshardham Temple inside it, was designed to accommodate about 20,000 guests. More than 300 laborers worked for a month and a half on the venue. The wedding ceremony started only at 6 pm but guests started pouring in from the noon to relish the musical and dance programs arranged as part of the wedding. The grand dining hall which could accommodate about 6,000 guests was filled with diners late into the night.
LDF ministers Kadakampally Surendran and J Mercykutty, KTDC chairman M Vijayakumar, C Divakaran MLA were among the guests in the limelight.
Former chief minister Oommen Chandy and Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala stayed away from the wedding. Both of them had attended the engagement function, drawing criticism from Congress state president V M Sudheeran. Biju Ramesh’s allegations that a couple of ministers in the Chandy government had received huge sums as bribes from bar owners had put the party in the defensive.
The Congress leaders were also wary of attending an extravagant wedding, especially in the backdrop of the party’s vehement criticism of former Karnataka minister and mining baron B Janardhana Reddy’s daughter’s luxurious wedding in Bengaluru at a time when the common man was scrambling for cash in the wake of demonetization.
M M Jacob, Vakkam Purushothaman, Aryadan Muhammed and N Sakthan attended the wedding along with Tamil Nadu minister S V Velmani.
Ramesh, the father of the bride, sought to clear the air regarding the spending on the wedding. Everything was in accordance with the law and anyone was free to examine the records, he said.
The venue of the wedding was set up in seven acres of land owned by Ramesh at Venpalavattom in the city.