The Sangh Parivar, Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Congress are trying to wage a mutiny against the Left Democratic Front government and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for complying with the Supreme Court order permitting entry for all women to Sabarimala Ayyappa Temple, Communist Party of India (Marxist) central committee member P.K. Sreemathi, MP, has alleged.
Ms. Sreemathi was inaugurating a ‘gender equality right protection’ meet organised by the All India Democratic Women’s Association here on Tuesday.
She said a democratically elected government had constitutional obligation to comply with the historic verdict of the Supreme Court of India and nobody could deny the right to equality guaranteed by the Constitution to any citizen.
Many leaders of the All India Congress Committee, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh; BJP leaders like Subramaniam Swami; and Union Ministers like Arun Jaitly and Maneka Gandhi have welcomed the Apex Court verdict.
Initially, Ramesh Chennithala, Leader of the Opposition, too welcomed the order. But he had changed his stand later, Ms. Sreemathi alleged. “Will Mr. Chennithala say that he will not accept the Indian Constitution,” Ms. Sreemathi quipped.
She said the stand taken by the government and the Left Democratic Front was to give necessary support and facility to those women who wished to offer prayers at Sabarimala.
Ms. Sreemathi said the CPI(M) and the LDF had taken many steps for the social uplift of women and the downtrodden sections of society. It was the Chief Minister who had taken the initiative to appoint Dalits as temple priests, she said.
Key role
“The Communist party played a key role in uprooting many social evils and reforming the Kerala society. Earlier, Sabarimala pilgrims used to undertake the pilgrimage on barefoot and after strictly observing 41-day vrithom (penance). But, today, we can see yen number of pilgrims wearing footwear during their trek to Sabarimala,” she said.
She alleged that the Chennithala-RSS axis was trying to flare communal tension and chaos in the State by taking woman devotees to the streets in the name of Sabarimala. Ms. Sreemathi said the All India Democratic Women’s Association and the CPI(M) would conduct awareness campaigns among women across the State to expose the machinations of the BJP-RSS-Congress axis.
C.S. Sujatha, former MP; and Santha Kadammanitta, wife of the late poet Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan; and Susan Kodi, Amritham Gokulan, Komalam Anirudhan, P. Sathidevi, association leaders; spoke. R. Unnikrishna Pillai, K. Ananthagopan, K.P. Udayabhanu, and T.K.G. Nair, CPI(M) leaders, also attended the meeting.