Antony throws out Kerala BJP chief’s offer for joint front

“The Congress views the CPI(M) and the BJP as two sides of the same coin and the question of having any truck with the BJP or the CPI(M) does not arise,” Antony said.

The Congress was in the forefront of fight against the BJP at the national level. At the same time, Congress was concentrating its energy against the CPI(M) in Kerala as that was the party in power in the state, he said.

Earlier in the day, Padmanabhan had said that the BJP in Kerala was willing to align with the Indian Union Muslim League and Kerala Congress factions if it would help formation of a broad democratic front to “free the state from the clutches of Marxists”.

“We have no problem in striking an alliance with the Muslim league. What is now needed in Kerala is a front of all democratic forces on the lines of the nda to end the dominance of the CPI(M),” Padmnabhan, who recently got re-elected as the state BJP chief, told a press conference here.

“The BJP views the league as a religion-based democratic party. We have no problem in having trucks with the league on a democratic platform. Nor will the league have any problem in getting along with the BJP,” he said.

The National Democratic Alliance at the Centre had as partners such diverse parties like the National Conference and the DMK. A similar formation was essential in Kerala too, he said.

Padmanabhan recalled that his colleagues were the first to welcome assumption of the late C.H. Muhammad Koya as chief minister of the state in the late 1970s.

It was unfortunate that the Congress, despite being a democratic party, was not ready to shed its anti-BJP position to give a joint fight to the CPI(M), he said. But BJP leaders had often had informal interaction with Congress leaders, Padmanabhan said.