a day ago
BJP counters Congress's missing person complaint against Suresh Gopi, seeks police help to trace Priyanka
A day after the Kerala Students Union (KSU), a Congress affiliate, sought to spotlight Union Minister and Thrissur Lok Sabha MP Suresh Gopi's allegedy high levels of absenteeism from his constituency, by filing a missing person complaint, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) struck back in almost equal measure by moving a similar police petition on Monday to trace the whereabouts of Congress leader and Wayanad MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
The political tit-for-tat manifested in the form of a police complaint by BJP Kerala Scheduled Tribes (ST) Morcha State president Mukundan Palliyara on Monday. Mr. Palliyara told the District Police Chief, Wayanad, that Ms. Vadra had been missing from her constituency since June and seemed unable to discharge her constitutional obligations to the electorate.
So far, neither Ms. Vadra nor any Congress leaders have riposted the BJP's campaign.
Incommunicado since July 25
However, Mr. Gopi appeared to make light of opposition criticism that he had deserted his electorate in Thrissur and remained mystifyingly traunt and incommunicado since the arrest of two Kerala nuns on charges of human trafficking for conversion to Christianity in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Chhattisgarh on July 25.
In a somewhat understated Facebook post, Mr. Gopi broadcast the image of him meeting with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas officials ahead of the discussions in the Rajya Sabha on the Pradhan Mantri Ujwala Yojana.
Mr. Gopi appeared reluctant to wade into the controversy and seemed to signal that constitutional obligations and Parliamentary responsibilities constrained him from spending time in Thrissur.
However, other senior BJP leaders took up cudgels for Mr. Gopi, who has found himself at the centre of a vortex of accusations of voter list fraud in the 2024 general elections in the Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency.
Former BJP State president and the party's core committee member K. Surendran said the Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] were in denial ever since Mr Gopi's emphatic win from Thrissur helped the party gain a toehold in Kerala's Parliamentary landscape. He said the upset win had stung the ruling front and opposition, prompting them to lay a smokescreen by belatedly quibbling about non-existent voter list cover-ups.
Meanwhile, Congress and CPI(M) continued to raise accusations of large-scale voter list manipulation by the BJP in Thrissur in the 2024 general elections. CPI and Congress said they would challenge Mr. Gopi's victory legally and politically and make the 'voter fraud' one of the centre planks of their respective anti-BJP campaigns in the local body polls later in the year.
