VD Satheeshan likely to take oath as Kerala CM on May 18 with 21-member Cabinet
After the formal announcement, the Congress Legislature Party passed a resolution to unanimously elect CM-designate Satheesan as its leader in the Assembly.
A protest march taken out by the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of the BJP, to Cliff House, the official residence of Kerala Chief Minister VD Satheesan, turned violent at the Devaswom Board Junction on Friday, prompting the police to use multiple rounds of water cannons.
The BJP’s youth wing organised the march to protest alleged irregularities and systemic anomalies in recruitment examinations conducted by the Kerala Public Service Commission (PSC).
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Activists alleged that the latest irregularities stemmed from at least 10 examination questions that were reportedly left completely unevaluated during the scoring process.
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Protesters carried placards of the Chief Minister and raised slogans criticising his recent participation in a protest outside the Prime Minister’s residence.
Satheesan had recently joined a high-profile Congress agitation led by Rahul Gandhi outside the Prime Minister’s residence over alleged irregularities in the NEET examination.
BJYM leaders said that while the Chief Minister actively champions students’ rights on national platforms, he has failed to take concrete and transparent action to address serious administrative failures in his own state’s recruitment examinations. They accused Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan of political hypocrisy.
The peaceful march escalated into a confrontation when the police stopped the procession with heavy barricading at the Devaswom Board Junction. Refusing to disperse, several protesters attempted to climb over the barricades. Despite repeated use of water cannons, the demonstrators continued their protest and occupied the intersection for a considerable period.
The situation was eventually brought under control after senior BJP leaders, including BJP Parliamentary Party leader B.B. Gopakumar and BJP State General Secretary S. Suresh, addressed the protesters.
The march is widely viewed as part of the BJP and BJYM’s broader strategy to counter the opposition INDIA bloc and highlight what they describe as its “double standards” on youth-related issues. It is also seen as an attempt to shift the political narrative.
Nationally, opposition parties, including the Congress-led INDIA bloc, have been actively supporting youth-led protests in New Delhi over the NEET paper leak controversy. By staging protests in Kerala, the BJYM seeks to argue that the INDIA bloc is vocal about youth grievances at the Centre but has failed to address similar concerns in states it governs.
The central theme of the BJYM’s campaign was the alleged hypocrisy of Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan. Protesters pointed out that Satheesan travelled to New Delhi to join Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a protest outside the Prime Minister’s residence over alleged examination irregularities at the national level, while his own administration is facing a Crime Branch Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe into the On-Screen Marking (OSM) software and allegations that answer sheets were left unevaluated.
By taking the protest directly to the Chief Minister’s official residence, the BJYM sought to convey that the INDIA alliance is selective in addressing allegations of irregularities in recruitment processes. The BJP’s political strategy appears to focus on shifting attention from alleged lapses in centrally conducted examinations to administrative failures at the state level, arguing that the opposition lacks the moral authority to champion students’ rights nationally while ignoring alleged PSC irregularities in Kerala.
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