Policies of Congress & BJP governments at Centre no different, says Pinarayi Vijayan

MALAPPURAM: Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that Congress should be ready to clarify against whom are they contesting in this election. So far, it seems that they are against the LDF, he said. Vijayan was addressing the election convention of P V Anvar, LDF candidate in Ponnani constituency, on Monday.
Vijayan said that there were no differences in the policies being followed by both Congress and BJP and the country needs a third alternative, which only can uphold secularism, at the Centre.“Congress and BJP are equally responsible for promoting communal politics and both are following the same anti-people policies,” he said.
“It was Congress government that supported communal forces to demolish Babri Masjid. BJP and Congress are playing the same game of promoting communalism for the poll gain and now it is very common that Congress leaders are joining BJP in many states,” the chief minister said.
In a strong attack against the BJP government at the Centre, Vijayan said that Muslims were widely attacked across the country by communal forces under NDA regime and the Prime Minister was not ready to utter a single word against targeting a section of people.
“BJP leaders themselves are saying that if Modi wins this election, this would be last election in the country. This election is crucial as we have to elect a third alternative government, which only can uphold secularism and democracy,” he added.
He said that Left parties were always responsible to protect secular and democratic values of the country and they had extended unconditional support to the first UPA government after the 2009 general election.
“It was due to the presence of the Left parties in Parliament that the first UPA government implemented various welfare schemes such as NREGA employment guarantee scheme. UPA-1 was forced to step back from implementing various anti-people programmes due to the strong opposition from the Left. But when the UPA came to power again in 2014, they went ahead with their anti-people policies as there was no Left parties in the government to oppose. For the past 10 years, alternative governments implemented similar policies, which are against the common man,” Vijayan said.
P V Anvar, A Vijayaraghavan, K E Ismail and others spoke at the convention.