Thiruvananthapuram: It looks like the women's entry into Sabarimala has ceased to be an issue for the BJP. The petition submitted by the BJP national leaders to governor P Sathasivam on Sunday in Kochi, seeking the restoration of normalcy in Sabarimala, has no mention of the issue for which the party had in the first instance took up cudgels. The petition, instead, speaks about the “undeclared emergency imposed by the state government”.
There is not even a tangential reference to the Supreme Court order, and the social churning it had triggered. The focus is on lack of infrastructure and police high-handedness.
“No pilgrimage centre in the country or world had the ill-fate of prohibitory orders being enforced, that too with no valid reason,” the petition said. The petition was submitted by a delegation of BJP leaders led by national general secretary and MP Saroj Pandey.
The petition stated that the "mischief" played by the CPI(M)-led LDF regime was two-fold. "Firstly, there is hardly any basic facility provided at the hill shrine. Shelter, drinking water and even toilets are denied to pilgrims. The threat of epidemics looms large due to lack of sanitation," it said. The petitioners paint a near apocalyptic situation. "The shops and restaurants have been rolling down their shutters as there is not much business. Many of the shop owners complain that that they have no option other than suicide, having fallen into debt trap," it noted.
The second “mischief” is the police action in Sabarimala. "Pilgrims are mentally and physically harassed by police in the name of security measures. Anybody and everybody, including children, chanting hymns or singing bhajans at the shrine are arrested and put behind bars," it said. "False cases are framed against them, often unbailable," it added.
The petition mentions what it terms the "harsh and impolite" treatment suffered by union minister Pon Radhakrishnan, and Hindu Aikya Vedi's "popular president" K P Sasikala. This is what the petition has to say about K Surendran's arrest. "K Surendran, a top-ranking politician of the state was arrested on his way. False cases are framed against him almost every day since then and taken around the state, from one prison to the other, ignoring his health condition. All this the petition attributes to the “false prestige of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan”. It added that poor infrastructure and police harassment were manifesting in the steep fall in pilgrim flow and temple revenue.
An official statement from the governor's office said: "The Governor patiently heard them and assured that their grievances will be urgently brought to the attention of the chief minister and the minister for devaswom for necessary action."
Besides Pandey, the BJP delegation included Members of Parliament Pralhad Joshi, Vinod Sonkar, Nalin Kumar Kateel, V Muraleedharan, BJP state president P S Sreedharan Pillai, BJP state general secretary A N Radhakrishnan and BJP leader Sobha Surendran.
