KERALA NEWSLETTER

Lakhs Gather at Secretariat, Collectorates with Protest

N S Sajith

ON August 22, 2012, lakhs of people, holding red flags, surrounded the Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram and the Collectortas at district headquarters in order to protest against the inhuman policies of the state and central governments. It is estimated that more than 15 lakh volunteers participated in these picketings from dawn to dusk. The protesters demanded curb on the spiralling rise in the prices of essential commodities and petrol, implementation of food security, and revocation of the anti-people policies of the state and central governments.

Volunteers gathered in the premises of government offices right from 6 a m to ensure that no staff could enter there. The chief minister and his cabinet colleagues entered their respective offices at 4.30 a m.

In Thiruvananthapuram, all the gates of Secretariat building were blocked by volunteers in the wee hours on the day. By the sunrise, the magnitude of the crowd at each gate had much increased. In every district, special volunteers brought drinking water, snacks and lunch to the protesters.

CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan inaugurated the picketing in the morning. Addressing the protesters, he said the central government was squeezing the people with its anti-people measures. Forward trading and speculative trading are allowed to continue to favour the corporates. The government said it had no money to implement the food security programme, but the same government provided enormous tax exemptions to the coroporates, he added.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Kodiyeri Balakrishnan inaugurated the picketing in Kannur; Polit Bureau member M A Baby  did so in Alappazha and opposition leader V S Achuthanandan in Kollam. Central Committee members A Vijayaraghavan, P Karunakaran, Paloli Muhammad Kutti, E P Jayarajan and Vaikom Vishwan inaugurated the action in Palakkad, Kasargode, Malappuarm, Thrissur, Kasargode and Idukki respectively. State secretariat members V V Dakshinamurthi, Elamaram Kareem, Baby John, A K Balan and M V Govindan inaugurated the picketing in other districts.

EMPLOYEES’ STRIKE

A GRAND SUCCESS

Giving a strong warning to the United Democratic Front government against implementing its contributory pension scheme, government employees and teachers in Kerala observed a one day strike on August 21, Tuesday. Most of the government offices and schools remained closed today; services and educational institutions were totally paralysed; state transport buses were off the road as KSRTC workers also joined the strike. More than 80 per cent of the total strength of government employees participated in the strike, as did employees in the state public sector units. Employees, including university employees, also organised rallies in the premises of their offices all over the state. Offices from the village level to the State Secretariat could function only with skeleton staff. All the municipal and corporation offices were seen vacant. 

The government did everything to deter the employees from joining the strike. It threatened them to cut their wages and salaries for the day. The campaign unleashed by the government argued that employees would be benefited by the participatory pension scheme. It also used the media to discourage the employees from joining the strike.

A Sreekumar, convenor of the Federation of State Government Employees and Teacher Organisations, and leaders of the Joint Action Committee greeted the employees and teachers for their participation in the strike while daring the government’s retaliatory actions. 

T V RAJESH, MLA,

RELEASED ON BAIL

On August 21, 2012, the High Court of Kerala granted bail to T V Rajesh, MLA, who was arrested in a case fabricated by the UDF government after the murder of a Muslim League worker called Shukur. Justice A S Satheesha Chandran directed Rajesh, state secretary of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), to appear before the investigation officers if and when required. The court also maintained that he, as a legislator, has every right to look after the interest of the people of his constituency. 

One may note that T V Rajesh, who is also a member of the CPI(M) state committee and an MLA from Kalyasseri constituency, was arrested in the said case on August 13. Rajesh in fact himself surrendered before the Judicial First Class Magistrate in Kannur, after the court rejected his anticipatory bail plea. Section 118 of the Indian Penal Code, under which one may get death sentence or imprisonment for life, was imposed against him.

Though the police went to the extent of illegally tapping the telephone calls of this legislator, it was not able to find any evidence of his involvement in the said murder case.

CPI(M) state committee member and its Kannur district secretary, P Jayarajan, was earlier remanded in the same case on August 1, as reported in these columns earlier. The investigation team imposed the same Section 118 against Jayarajan. 

In another development, Karayi Rajan, a member of the CPI(M) Kannur district secretariat, also got bail from the High Court in the case regarding the murder of RMP leader Chandrashekharan. Apart from Rajan, nine other persons named in the chargesheet in the same case, also got bail. The court directed them not to enter Kozhikode district.

EXODUS FROM

KERALA AS WELL

The youth from the north eastern states, and mainly from Assam, started fleeing from Kerala as well. In the backdrop of the violence in Assam and after the spread of the hate messages, the youth working in hotels, construction sites, private security firms and quarries, among others, rushed to various railway stations in Kerala to catch a train to reach their home towns back in the north east. The Guwahati Express, Howrah Express and Shalimar Express were the main trains they depended upon to reach their home towns. The police estimate was that more than five thousand workers had departed in the first week itself. 

While the intelligence wing under the state and central governments started an enquiry into the mass exodus of the North East youth, there were reports that they were being threatened by militant groups like the Popular Front in Kerala. At Manjeri in Malappuram district, bricks workers complained about the threats coming from the Popular Front. They were asked to leave the state before Sunday, August 19. The police at Manjeri have registered a case in this regard. Work in various quarries has been stopped due to the mass departure of Assamese and other workers. 

Thousands of workers booked tickets in private buses to reach Thiruvananthapuram, the main railway station from where the trains to Guwahati and Kolkata depart. The police have no details about the number of workers who have departed from Kerala. However, T P Senkumar, DGP (Intelligence), stated something unbelievable --- that there were no reports about the spread of hate messages in Kerala. In the state there were no security threats either, he added.

CHARGESHEET WITH

OBVIOUS OMISSIONS

Though the right wing media started celebrating right from  the day the special investigation team submitted its chargesheet about the murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party leader T P Chandrashekharan, the so called channel experts and legal eagles did not point out the obvious omissions in it. The media only praised the special team investigating the murder for its “active and timely” intervention to nab the assailants and its eagerness to submit the chargesheet within the stipulated time to the Judicial First Class Magistrate’s court at Vadakara. The submitted its chargesheet on the 13th of this month.

However, certain legal experts say the chargesheet has some lapses and vagueness which may affect the claims of the police officers in the special investigation team and of Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, the Kerala home minister. 

A major lapse in the chargesheet is that it failed to establish how the weapons had been procured. Nor is there any mention of the source of the funds that were allegedly exchanged, before the murder, between CPI(M) workers and the leader of the killer gang. There has been made no charge under the Indian Arms Act in this case, nor is Section 153(A) invoked. 

The Panoor Police had once registered a case against Kodi Suni and his gang members under the provisions of the Arms Act for threatening three RSS workers in Kannur district at 4 p m, on their way to kill T P Chandrasekharan on May 4. But the crucial evidence in this regard is missing from the chargesheet. 

Another glaring omission is that the memorandum of evidence submitted along with the chargesheet contains no documentary evidence to prove that some of the accused were functionaries and activists of the CPI(M), even as the investigators and the government claim that the killing of Chandrashekharan was politically motivated.

Many of the accused have been charged under Section 118 (concealing the design to commit an offence) of the Indian Penal Code, while they have also been charged under Section 120B (criminal conspiracy), Section 302 (murder) and Section 109 (abetment). This is like booking a person for theft and also for hiding his design to commit theft.

The police have said that the conspiracy to kill Chandrashekharan was hatched by a section of the CPI(M) leaders in 2009 itself. But no investigation has been carried out whether any district or state level leaders had any culpable knowledge of the conspiracy.