BENGALURU: Kerala BJP President Kummanam Rajasekharan today claimed that the participation of JNU students' leader Kanhaiya Kumar during the Assembly poll campaign will only damage prospects of Congress and Left parties and not BJP.
"In Kanhaiya Kumar's case, Congress and Communist parties all are same, but BJP has a different attitude. So, there is no question of damage to BJP. It will damage CPI-M and Congress. I am confident that Kanhaiya Kumar visiting Kerala will cause damage to them," he told reporters here.
There were reports that Kumar, arrested for sedition and later released from Tihar Jail, will be campaigning for the Left Front in the elections.
Replying to a pertinent question on Kumar, Rajasekharan said BJP will also invite students from JNU to hold a debate on the JNU row.
"If Kanhaiah Kumar is coming to Kerala, we will welcome because, we will get a chance to explain what happened in JNU. We will invite students from JNU...They will come. We are interested in having a debate. We are not afraid of Kanhaiya Kumar," he said.
On seat-sharing discussions for the Assembly polls, he said, "We cannot say much about seat-sharing because our new constituents in the alliance have not held seat-sharing discussions. In the first round, we have discussed framing the Common Minimum Programme. The second round of discussion will be on seat-sharing. We will complete it in next two to three days."
Replying to a query, he claimed that BJP would win 71-plus seats in the elections in Kerala because the party's morale was high, especially after a good show in the last panchayat elections.
"In that elections, we have proved that we have 15 per cent of vote share in Kerala politics...," he said.