Kerala: Thousands participate but Raj Bhavan march turns out to be a tame affair

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Thousands of LDF workers, under the banner of the Education Protection Forum, marched to Raj Bhavan here on Tuesday in protest against governor Arif Mohammed Khan's alleged attempt to implement the Sangh Parivar's agenda but the mass mobilisation noticably lacked belligerence and the siege quality that the organisers had tried to project.
Inaugurating the protest dharna, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury said Khan's confrontational stand towards the LDF government in Kerala was part of a larger agenda of the BJP and RSS, which are hellbent on overpowering the higher education sector to fashion it according to their political ideology.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his cabinet colleagues kept off the protest while both the BJP and Congress opposed it.
Recalling his long association with Khan, Yechury said the struggle was not personally against him but against the BJP-RSS fascist agenda that reduced the constitutional role of governor into a means for advancement of its political objective. In Kerala, the office of the governor is pitted against the government, he said.
Referring to the tussle between the government and governor in neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Telangana, Yechury said these governors were acting oblivious of their constitutional position, impairing the centre-state relationship as envisaged in the Constitution.
Yechury also sought to defy arguments that the UGC regulations are sacrosanct. “As far as university affairs are concerned, the regulations being a subordinate legislation cannot claim supremacy over the original laws passed by state assemblies. The original legislation should supersede the subordinate legislation,” he said, adding that the Sarkaria and Punchhi commissions had stated that the Centre should consult the states before bringing in legislations on matters that fall in the Concurrent List.
Some courts have opined that UGC guidelines are supreme. This has to be properly reviewed and I think all non-BJP governments must seriously consider moving the Supreme Court together," he said.
Accusing the Centre of bringing out the new education policy without considering views of the state governments, he said control over education was what the new policy envisaged.
"Control on education is a very important aspect of the BJP-RSS political design to convert the secular democratic India into a fascistic Hindutva rashtra of their liking. For that they require the control of education and consciousness of our youth. In order to achieve this political objective, they have to assault the system of higher education," he said.
Yechury lauded the higher education sector in Kerala, saying universities in the state were on par with universities in Europe and the US in terms of academic quality. "The efforts of the LDF government in Kerala is to convert Kerala youth into leaders of the knowledge society of the world today so that everybody's creativity can flourish. And this is something that is exactly the opposite of what the RSS project of a fascist Hindurashtra wants. They want mind control. They don't want creativity. They want people to think in a backward, obscurantic manner. They want people to be victims of superstition and blind faith. Kerala higher education is an obstacle to their fascist agenda," he said.
CPM state secretary M V Govindan, CPI secretary Kanam Rajendran, other LDF leaders and DMK leader Thiruchi Siva also spoke on the occasion.