Sabarimala verdict: For Congress and BJP, much depends on apex court's decision
KOCHI: Politically, for the Congress and the BJP in Kerala, the Supreme Court verdict on Sabarimala will be paramount in shaping their political strategy. Certainly, there is a catch for both the parties if the apex court again favours the entry of women of all ages to the temple. It is for sure that both the parties are completely clueless as to how to go about if the verdict upholds the original judgment that banned an age-old custom of preventing the entry of menstruating women in Sabarimala.
Things will not be that easy for the Congress and the BJP to undertake the same kind of massive agitation and campaign which they did when the temple opened for rituals immediately after the verdict in September 2018. Truly, the BJP and the Congress prefer a verdict reversing the original judgment or a directive to continue with the custom after referring the case to a larger constitutional bench. If that’s the case, both the parties can heave a sigh of relief and save themselves from a tight spot they might find themselves in while executing a strategy to again reach out to lakhs of devotees.
The Congress, which recorded a sweeping victory in the Lok Sabha polls riding high on sentiments of devotees, knows how important the Thursday’s judgment will be to reach out to devotees claiming that the party was with them at the time of crisis. “We look forward to a verdict favouring the sentiments of devotees.
We don’t want to comment on what will be our plan if the judgment is the other way around. Let us see what the Supreme Court says,” said Kannur MP and Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) working president K Sudhakaran, who was the first Congress leader in Kerala to come out with a statement supporting the sentiments of devotees and launched a protest condemning the LDF government’s decision to implement the verdict in haste.
For the state BJP leadership, there is still no concrete plan on Sabarimala and they fear that the party needs to really do something big to win over the hearts of devotees who felt let down. “We hope for a verdict in favour of the devotees who want to follow the age-old custom. If the judgment is in contravention, we will plan to approach the centre seeking an appropriate law to protect the interests of the devotees,” said BJP state general secretary MT Ramesh.