Jaitley Attack: Kerala Government's Advertising Blitzkrieg To Outdo Newspaper Headlines

Fighting a battle of perception in the midst of all the headlines surrounding BJP’s attack on the CPI(M)-led Kerala government over political murders, the state government has issued eye-catching full page advertisements in major English dailies titled ‘What Makes Kerala No. 1’.

On Sunday, Union Minister Arun Jaitley visited the house of RSS worker Rajesh, who was allegedly killed by CPI(M) cadres on July 29. “Every time the LDF is in power, incidents of violence increase. The kind of wounds that were inflicted on Rajesh would even have embarrassed terrorists,” Jaitley, in-charge of the Defence and Finance Portfolios told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

The Pinarayi Vijayan government, probably anticipating that the Jaitley visit and his comments would make it to the front page of national dailies, put out full page advertisements in the morning dailies.

For example, if you picked up Hindustan Times in Delhi this morning, the advertisement by the Kerala government is bound to get your attention more than the single column on Jaitley’s visit to the state. The Times of India too had the full page advertisement listing out the achievements of Kerala.

Quotes from ‘cool guru’ Sri M, former SC judge K.T. Thomas and actor Kamal Haasan endorse the state’s view in the advertisement which celebrates the development indices in Kerala.

There have been close to 170 political killings in the last two decades.

Police records with details of every political murder between 2000 and 2017 accessed by NDTV impugn both the political fronts in Kerala. In the last 17 years, 85 CPM workers, 65 RSS or BJP workers, 11 workers of Congress and IUML each have been killed - mostly by their political rivals including CPM and RSS or BJP.

Amidst violence from both sides in the RSS-CPI(M) tussle, a victory in a battle of perception is being fought. Earlier on Monday, the BJP came out and said Vijayan was functioning like a ‘chief murderer'.

"CPM has actually being functioning as Communist Party of Murderers. And there has not been any governance for that. Last 13 months our cadres, the BJP, RSS cadres have been killed in a very gruesome, barbaric and a violent manner. The people of this country know the real face of the communist party. The real face of CPM and its Chief Minister Mr. Pinarayi Vijayan was the architect of violence in the Kannur district, which is the epicenter of all such violence," BJP’s GVL Narasimha Rao said.

"So, today rather than functioning as the CM of Kerala, he is functioning more like a chief murderer for the Communist Party in Kerala. This is highly condemnable," he added.

The CPI(M) hit out later, saying intelligence reports had earlier suggested that the BJP might carry out attacks in some parts of the state to divert the attention from the party's medical college scam, said Vijayan.

"The government had Intelligence reports that the BJP might carry out attacks in some parts of the state to divert the attention from BJP's medical college scam," Vijayan said in the Kerala Assembly.

Stressing on the same, Vijayan said the government took precautionary measures to control this and is ready to handover the case of the RSS worker's murder to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) if necessary.

 He also informed that the internal probe report conducted by the BJP will also be considered by Vigilance investigation team.

With Agency Inputs