Kerala chief minister and Marxist veteran Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday took a dig at Congress leader and incumbent Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi for contesting the polls from the constituency against Annie Raja of CPI, a party that is a part of the opposition’s INDIA bloc.

Lashing out at Rahul Gandhi, Vijayan said, “Rahul Gandhi is coming to Kerala and contesting against Annie Raja. She is a national leader of the CPI. She was called anti-national during the Manipur violence for strongly calling out the BJP government’s wrongdoing. It was her fact-finding system that brought to light the cruelty of the Christian population. What was the role of Rahul Gandhi in that? Can he say anything about that?”

Launching an election campaign in Wayanad, where senior CPI leader Annie Raja is contesting against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and BJP chief K Surendran, Vijayan lambasted the grand old party for its perceived unreliability. He also claimed that Gandhi is coming to Wayanad to contest against the Left Democratic Front (LDF).

“When the country saw many such protests, we could always see Annie Raja present there. But did we see the most important leader of Congress, Rahul Gandhi? They can decide who will contest from where, but the inappropriateness was discussed by the entire country. Everybody is questioning his decision to come to Kerala but not competing against the BJP directly at the centre,” he added.

He also criticised the Congress party over the defections into the saffron camp saying that its leaders were defecting to BJP, which results in tarnishing its reliability at a critical juncture when secular forces confront the saffron party’s dominance in the country.

Elections 2024:

Polling for the Lok Sabha elections will be conducted in seven phases, the first of which is on April 19. Besides voting for the 543 Lok Sabha seats, the Election Commission of India has also announced Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, and Odisha, as well as assembly by-polls for 26 vacant seats.

The southern state with 20 Lok Sabha seats will go to polls in a single phase on April 26. The counting of votes will take place on June 4.