Sabarimala tantri rights to poll fund scam, why BJP is a divided house in Kerala
The high of winning three assembly seats in Kerala may be waning as the state BJP manoeuvres through controversies that have left party leaders divided
The high of winning three assembly seats in Kerala may be waning as the state BJP manoeuvres through controversies that have left party leaders divided. The rift has widened all the more following buzz that Kerala unit chief Rajeev Chandrasekhar removed three office-bearers from their posts over alleged misappropriation of election funds. The election fund fraud is pegged at Rs 12 crore. It has prompted Chandrasekhar to order an internal audit. One of the office-bearers removed was reportedly a state secretary; the other was a state committee member and the third a zonal secretary. Read Full Story “Preliminary investigations have apparently found election funds to be misappropriated. Several leaders had approached national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh with purported evidence on fake bills and fund transfers to shady accounts,” a senior state BJP leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, told INDIA TODAY.
The audit team is verifying the bills generated and funds transferred during the assembly poll campaign. The matter is likely to be discussed with Chandrasekhar after his return from vacation in the UK on July 18. Leaders close to Chandrasekhar believe party rivals are attempting to put him in a spot over the election fund scam. Meanwhile, in more crisis, BJP state vice-president K.S. Radhakrishnan has demanded that the Thazhamon family, who are the hereditary tantris (chief priests) of Sabarimala Temple and hold exclusive authority over rituals, relinquish that right. His argument is that Kandararu Rajeevaru, the current tantri and a member of the Thazhamon Madom family, has been named an accused in the Sabarimala gold loot case by the Kerala police, and was arrested. Radhakrishnan urged the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB), which manages the Sabarimala Temple, to strip the Thazhamon family of tantri rights.
He also pointed to the arrest of former tantri Kandararu Mohanaru by the Kochi police in 2006 in a case of alleged blackmail and extortion. In 2012, a court in Ernakulam acquitted Mohanaru while convicting 11 people. The TDB had taken away his tantri status after the scandal. Radhakrishnan’s remarks were rejected by Chandrasekhar with a clarification that the tantri’s appointment was not a political issue and that BJP leaders’ opinion on the matter did not reflect the views of the party. Even the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leadership in Kerala felt the remarks on tantri appointment were unwarranted. The state BJP had more to handle when Union minister Suresh Gopi criticised the running of the Nair Service Society (NSS), a grouping representing the upper caste Nair Hindu community, by its general secretary G. Sukumaran Nair. Radhakrishnan also denounced NSS office-bearers after he was denied a visit to Mannam Samadhi, the memorial tomb of NSS founder Mannathu Padmanabhan located in Changanassery.
The BriefWire