Thiruvananthapuram: Hinting that CPM won’t force its view on believers in the Sabarimala issue, politburo member M A Baby said the party preferred a broader consensus to implement the awaited Supreme Court Constitution bench order. “Let SC deliver the verdict first. We need to evolve a societal consensus for implementing the verdict so that it won’t lead to conflict,” he said
Denying reports of differences of opinion among CPM leaders on the matter, Baby said there is no confusion in the party and issues related to beliefs and rituals need to be resolved through debates and awareness campaigns. “We don’t need to be in a hurry,” he said.
“At present, the issue is under the consideration of the larger bench of the Supreme Court Constitution bench. When SC is set to examine all aspects of the issue based on Article 25 of the Constitution, UDF, in its idiocy, has announced that they would introduce related legislation. Our response to UDF is that let’s debate the real issues of the people. Sabarimala must be debated only after the SC verdict,” Baby told reporters here. “We can’t predict what the SC order would be,” he said.
Baby recalled how all major political parties, including BJP and Congress, initially supported the SC order on allowing women entry to Sabarimala. He said the opposition’s efforts to make Sabarimala an election issue is a crooked attempt at avoiding the real issues, including how the Pinarayi Vijayan government steered the state past adversities such as floods and cyclones.
Reacting to the new position of CPM on the Sabarimala issue, BJP state president K Surendran asked chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan to tender an unconditional apology to thousands of Sabarimala devotees for hurting their sentiments. “The CM should make a public statement saying that the stand taken by his government on Sabarimala was wrong. He should admit the mistake and offer an unconditional apology to devotees,” Surendran said.
“It is Pinarayi Vijayan who is supposed to make a statement, if at all CPM is ready to change its stand and revise the affidavit. The words of M A Baby, who is a marginalized leader even within the CPM, do not carry weight. After all, it was Vijayan who had declared himself a renaissance leader and taken a stand against devotees,” Surendran said. The BJP leader, who was jailed in connection with the Sabarimala agitation, said devotees won’t take CPM’s about-turn seriously.
KPCC president Mullappally Ramachandran said the CPM’s apparent change of stand was just a “tactical ploy”. “CPM had complicated the Sabarimala issue. At one point, the CM even described the issue as a difference of opinion between upper and lower castes. Talks of a revised stand on the issue are a ploy to cheat devotees,” Ramachandran said. According to him, UDF has maintained a clear and consistent stand on the issue.