Congress is a party trying to join BJP in a single jump, that’s what we saw in Mattathur: Kerala CM

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday mocked the Congress after all eight of its elected members shifted allegiance to the BJP to ascend to power in the Mattathur Grama Panchayat in Thrissur.

In a Facebook post on Sunday, Chief Minister Vijayan said the Congress is a party ready to join the BJP in one jump. “Congress is the party that is ready to join the BJP in a single jump. That jump was witnessed in Mattathur in Thrissur district,” he said, adding, “This is not the political spectacle that Kerala is used to.”

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All the panchayat members who contested as Congress candidates switched sides, joined the BJP camp, and came to power, he said.

“There are only eight Congress members in the UDF. The BJP has taken them away without even leaving a single one for ‘medicine’,” he said.

“This shows that even those currently in the Congress will not hesitate to join the BJP by the time darkness falls. Congressmen have no conscience about changing the palm symbol to a lotus. It is clear from the local results that there is a BJP-Congress adjustment in many places in the state. This willingness of the Congress to sell itself is fuelling the BJP’s Kerala delusions,” the Chief Minister wrote on Facebook.

The full text of the Facebook post:

“Congress is the party that is ready to join the BJP in a single jump. That jump was witnessed in Mattathur in Thrissur district. All the panchayat members who contested as Congress candidates defected to the BJP camp and came to power. Only eight Congress members are with the UDF there. The BJP took them away without even leaving a single one for medicine. This is not the political spectacle that Kerala is used to.”

“In 2016, out of the 44 Congress MLAs in Arunachal Pradesh, 43, including the Chief Minister, had joined the NDA overnight. In Puducherry, where there was not even a single MLA, the BJP came to power in 2021 by poaching Congress members. In 2019, the entire Congress Legislative Party in Goa merged with the BJP. The Kerala model of all this is what happened in Mattathur. Congress leaders went with the BJP to prevent the LDF president from coming to that panchayat. They openly say that,” CM Vijayan wrote on Facebook.

In a dramatic turn of events, eight Congress members who resigned from the party joined hands with the BJP to elect independent candidate Tessy Jose Kallarakkal as the president of the Mattathur grama panchayat on Saturday.

“We resigned from the Congress to protest the failure of the district and block-level leadership to intervene in internal disputes. There were issues right from the candidate selection stage, and matters worsened after the results were declared,” said Linto Pallipparambil, one of the Congress ward members who resigned from the party.

Reacting to Chief Minister Vijayan’s criticism against Congress over party members defecting en masse in Mattathur panchyat, senior Congress leader and Opposition leader VD Satheesan said that none of the Congress members have joined the BJP; they have only supported the rebel against the presidential candidate of the LDF.

Satheesan said that even though the LDF has lost the local body elections and wore a cap, the Chief Minister is only interested in making fun of Congress. “The Chief Minister and the government are sitting there thinking that they have not lost. The LDF should learn from the defeat,” he said.