It looks like there will not be even a warning, the mildest form of disciplinary action in the CPM, against the party's central committee member EP Jayarajan for having met the BJP's Kerala prabhari Prakash Javadekar a year ago.
"Jayarajan will continue as the LDF convener. Nothing has happened to initiate disciplinary proceedings against him," CPM state secretary MV Govindan told reporters after the CPM state secretariat meeting in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday.
The CPM state secretariat has accepted Jayarajan's explanation that Javadekar had arrived at his son's house unannounced but he had quickly left the house after exchanging some pleasantries with the BJP leader.
Jayarajan also said that Javadekar, too, had left with him after he told the BJP leader that he was not willing to talk political matters with him. “Jayarajan had only an innocent role in this,” Govindan said. The party has junked rest of the charges, like Jayarajan had met BJP leader Sobha Surendran three times and was on the verge of joining the BJP.
The party has also asked Jayarajan to move legally against all "untruths". The CPM has bought into Jayarajan’s argument that it was a grand conspiracy to malign the party and him.
And in what looked like a convenient change of stand, Govindan found nothing wrong in Jayarajan meeting a senior BJP leader at his house. "It is crazy to say that it is wrong to meet leaders from other parties. What kind of politics is it to say that we cannot meet our political opponents," Govindan said. "Are we ideologically so weak that we would crumble as a party if we meet people from other parties. It is a very corny assessment," he said.
Govindan failed to give a convincing reply when it was pointed out that just a month ago the CPM had crucified N K Premachandran for having lunch with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "You cannot compare these two events," was his only response.
However, even while saying that it was not improper to meet Javadekar, Govindan made a shrewd but subtle observation that could be read as a rebuke to Jayarajan, even Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan who had said that he had met Javadekar a few times and chatted with him.
Govindan's remark came when he was asked whether he would meet Javadekar and talk to him. In a tone that suggested that it was not a big deal, the party secretary said that he had in fact met Javadekar on April 24, at the Thiruvananthapuram Airport. It was the finishing sentence that was loaded. "But since I had nothing to do with him, I sat in one corner and he in another."
Nonetheless, the CPM State Secretariat expressed its disapproval of Jayarajan's connections with shady middlemen like Nandakumar. "The Secretariat wants Jayarajan to end all connections with 'dallal' Nandakumar. Pinarayi himself had warned of the consequences of forging such bonds on April 26. The party, too, found this assessment right," Govindan said, and added; "Jayarajan himself told the State Secretariat that he had cut all links with 'dallal' Nandakumar."
