Rahul’s statement on Pinarayi Vijayan immature: Raja

Congress president, AICC general secretary urged to advise Rahul to withdraw his statement inviting ED to arrest CM

Communist Party of India (CPI) Secretary D. Raja has said the recent statement of Congress leader and United Democratic Front (UDF) candidate in the Wayanad constituency Rahul Gandhi against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is immature and baseless.

Addressing the media here on Saturday Mr. Raja said Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary K.C. Venugopal should advise Mr. Gandhi to withdraw his statement inviting the Enforcement Directorate

(ED) to arrest Mr. Vijayan. At a time when a sharp protest was taking place across the country against the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, such a statement from a national leader like Mr. Gandhi was quite unfortunate, Mr. Raja said. Though Mr. Gandhi was a Prime Minister candidate in 2019, he was not the PM candidate of the INDIA bloc in the forthcoming election, Mr. Raja said.

On how the block would join hands with a national leader like Mr. Gandhi, the CPI leader said it was constituted with a wider perspective. On why the CPI joined hands with the Congress at the Centre and fought each other in Kerala, Mr. Raja said the ”ght in Kerala was between the LDF and the UDF, not the NDA and the INDIA bloc.

“The NDA leaders are now focusing on south India since they suspected that there would be a change in government and they would lose power in north India,” he added.

The ght in Kerala is between the LDF and the UDF, not the NDA and the INDIA bloc.