Thrissur: As the spotlight is on University College after the recent violence on its campus and reports of exam malpractices by SFI leaders there, Kerala minister Kadakampally Surendran took a strange recourse to defend the college from getting a bad press.
Kadakampally, who is the state minister for Co- Operation, Tourism and Devaswom, admitted that he quietly prayed for the success of India's lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 so that news about its launch would replace University College violence from newspapers.
A spectacle like the lift-off of the lunar mission had to take place in order to displace news about some petty violence from newspapers, he admitted.
Though he condemned the violence inside the college and added that the state government has initiated criminal action in the case initially in his speech, by the end of it he termed it as petty violence. "I am saying this with full conviction and I won't be upset if newspapers tomorrow write that I downplayed the incident," he said, while speaking at the foundation-laying ceremony of the core banking unit of Service Cooperative Bank in Kallur on Tuesday.
Alleging that a “group of people” is hell bent on maligning the college that is pride of Kerala and the party, the CPM leader said that initiatives like Rebuild Kerala are given scant media coverage.
