KOCHI: Congress working committee (CWC) member and former Chief Minister A K Antony has said if K Karunakaran were alive today, the BJP could not have made inroads in Kerala. He was speaking at the birth centenary celebrations of K Karunakaran here on Thursday organised by the Leader Karunakaran study centre. He also said if Karunakaran was alive BJP would not have got an MLA from Nemom.
Antony said Karunakaran being a chaste Hindu was a highly secular person and it was his vision of bringing together all religions and communities which paved the way for a secular state.
He also called upon the Congress leaders to actively work for the coming Lok Sabha elections as this is the last bus the UDF and the Congress has to fight and win in 2019.
Antony also said Karunakaran, who has passed away, is a thousand times more powerful than the Karunakaran who was alive. He also said while there were major disagreements between Karunakaran and himself, for the cause of the UDF and the Congress they stood together against the common enemy.
Antony said during the earlier days of the UDF, K K Viswanathan, K Karunakaran, C M Stephen and himself used to sit together and iron out differences but in the Congress, there was unity and no difference of opinion. This was a veiled reference to the recent fiasco over the Rajya Sabha seat sharing which led to bad blood among the state Congress brass.
He said Karunakaran was the second kingmaker in Delhi after Kamaraj and Karunakaran’s political savviness was called for by Sonia Gandhi when Narasimha Rao was the Prime Minister.
He said in 1967, the Congress had only nine seats and CPM-led United Front had 117 and the Chief Minister was the maverick E M S Namboodiripad and still, the CPM- led United Front Government had to resign in 1969.