The recent portrayal by two former CPI-M insiders that the party had singled out late party veteran VS Achuthanandan for harsh criticism, that someone in the party has demanded “capital punishment” for him during its 2015 state conference in Alappuzha, has put the left party in a spot in Kerala.
Senior CPI-M leader and former MP Suresh Kurup has revealed that Achuthanandan walked out of the Alappuzha conference following a young girl’s capital punishment remark. In an article titled ‘This is how my VS was’, published in the Sunday supplement of a Malayalam daily, Suresh Kurup, a well-known VS supporter, says a little girl had demanded “capital punishment” for VS at the party Alappuzha state conference in 2015. He said people, only the age of his grandchildren, raised the allegations against him at the conference.
“At the Alappuzha state conference, a little girl said that VS should be given capital punishment. Unable to bear this insult, VS left the venue. Alone, sad, but without bowing his head, without saying anything, without looking at anyone, he went home from the meeting venue,” Kurup said in the article.
Earlier, former MLA and member of the CPI-M state committee Pirappancode Murali made an explosive allegation about VS Achuthanandan’s infamous defeat in Mararikulam and the ‘capital punishment’ statement made by a young CPI-M leader against VS Achuthanandan . Pirappancode Murali said a youth leader in the party demanded capital punishment for VS. He made this remarks after VS’s death.
Pirappancode Murali and Suresh Kurup made these statements at a time when the party was busy working on ways to come out clean in the ‘capital punishment’ allegation by terming it as baseless rumours.
The “capital punishment” allegation was earlier raised when M Swaraj was fielded the CPI-M candidate in the last Nilambur by-election. The controversy resurfaced after VS’s death. Party leader Pirappancode Murali revealed that a youth leader had made this remark at the CPI-M state conference.
Meanwhile, state general education minister V Sivankutty has dismissed Suresh Kurup’s revelation regarding capital punishment. Sivankutty said in Thiruvananthapuram that he had attended the Alappuzha conference and there was no such discussion in the conference.
Former devaswom minister and CPI-M leader Kadakampally Surendran also denied the revelations regarding the capital punishment reference against VS Achuthanandan. On Sunday, he said he was present at the Thiruvananthapuram and Alappuzha conferences and that he had never heard anyone saying such a thing.
CPI-M youth leader Chinta Jerome said that no one said a single word of capital punishment in the Alappuzha conference.