Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's studious, 'by the book' response to the Supreme Court verdict on women's entry at Sabarimala seems to have left the government with its mouth painfully gagged in the Maradu flats demolition verdict.
Even as a wave of popular support is rising across Kerala for the victimised flat owners, it looks like the Pinarayi government has no choice but to stick to the same line it had proudly taken when the Sabarimala verdict came: the government is duty-bound to obey the Supreme Court order.
Pinarayi's plight resembles that of a person who has been caught doing something embarrassing and who, being excessively proud, does not want to admit that he has been shamed and therefore continues to do the same thing. Though his party has conceded that the government's Sabarimala stand had alienated a section of voters, Pinarayi Vijayan is yet to accept it.
The Chief Minister had at least managed to give ideological muscle to his conservative approach in Sabarimala. The way he revived the renaissance debate had impressed many.
But after the Maradu verdict, he cannot even take ideological cover for not addressing the uncertainty of the 350-odd affected families. After the Kavalappara and Puthumala landslides, serious questions have been raised about his government's mining policy. (The Pinarayi Vijayan government had halved the distance a quarry has to keep from rivers and residential buildings from 100 metres to 50 metres, and had stripped the panchayats of their power to refuse permission for mining activities.) Even earlier, the tax concessions given to a resort run by former transport minister Thomas Chandy along the Alappuzha backwaters was seen as hypocritical.
Leave alone giving a new spin to the crisis, Pinarayi Vijayan has simply shut shop. The Chief Minister who has this habit of putting out on Facebook his thoughts on all major issues that concerns people - from Chandrayaan and PSC exams to Kochi Metro and waste management - is but deafeningly silent on Maradu demolition. Even district-level CPM leaders whisper that the Chief Minister's Maradu silence is "thoughtless".
"Last time in Sabarimala it was the Chief Minister by his firm stand on the verdict who set the political agenda. Even if we were defeated, it was a courageous loss. But in Maradu, the government doesn't seem to have an opinion except to inanely say that the order would be implemented. There is a threat that we could be led by other parties like the Congress and the BJP that can never claim to occupy a high moral ground on environment issues," a CPM central committee member said on condition of anonymity.
The Chief Minister's hands have already been forced by the Congress. Hesitant all this while to take any initiative, Pinarayi Vijayan has on Sunday called for an all-party meeting on the Maradu issue. The demand for convening an "urgent all-party meeting" was first made by former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy.
Chandy himself was the first person to suggest a solution. "We will put pressure on the Centre to give retrospective effect to the Coastal Zone notification that was issued on February 28 this year," he said. This would be one of the major points of discussion during the all-party meeting. In the latest notification, the flats facing demolition fall under CRZ-II category and therefore would not be bound by the stringent regulations that applies in the CRZ-III category.
There was a time when the CPM had taken on Supreme Court rulings with reckless aggression. Take for instance the 'shumbhan' controversy. When the apex court banned roadside public meetings in 2011, the CPM leader M V Jayarajan, who later became the Chief Minister's private secretary and is now the CPM's Kannur district secretary, had called the judge an "idiot" ('shumbhan'). He proudly went to jail for this.
Now, with the CPM leaders looking tame, it were the Congress leaders who asked pointed questions. Tharoor's tweet, for instance, captured the puzzling nature of the demolition verdict. "Since the area where the buildings are now certified permissible for construction, the order appears to be based on the argument that the old CRZ classification prevailed at the time they were built. So destroy bldgs (sic) that used to be illegal then but are legal now? Makes sense?," he asked in a tweet on September 12.
The very same day, Congress leader and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh raised the 'differential treatment' argument. "Supreme Court has ordered demolition of apartments in Kochi that violate Coastal Regulation Zone rules. Yet, in similar case of violation it imposed penalty on DLF & regularised. It had stayed the demolition of Adarsh housing complex in Mumbai. Why such differential treatment?," he said in a tweet.
On September 12, the day Jairam Ramesh and Tharoor threatened to steal the show, CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan jumped into the fray. The Pala election was round the corner and he had to do something. He called the SC verdict "heartless". "The CPM will stand by the flat owners," he assured. On September 14, he even launched a solidarity march and promised the residents that he would make the government do all that was legally possible to protect their interests.
Yet again, Pinarayi Vijayan and Kodiyeri Balakrishnan seemed to move in opposing directions. After the Lok Sabha results, Kodiyeri sounded chastised, hinted that the party's Sabarimala strategy had misfired. But Pinarayi insisted that the electoral loss had nothing to do with his Sabarimala strategy.
Now, while the government is busy making arrangements for the demolition, Kodiyeri has announced that the party would try its best to prevent such an outcome. But in this case, what looks like a conflict could actually be the CPM strategy.
On the one side, the government will be seen as upholding the SC verdict. On the other, the CPM will be attempting to position itself as the saviour of the aggrieved flat owners. Win-win.
