Thiruvananthapuram: A group of BJP leaders in Kerala on Wednesday met Governor Arif Mohammed Khan and submitted a memorandum, seeking his intervention against the LDF government's alleged abuse of police machinery to tarnish its image and harass its leaders out of 'political vendetta.'
They alleged that the Left government was targeting the party's state president K Surendran and attempting to implicate him in criminal cases.
The BJP delegation, led by former union minister and MLA, veteran O Rajagopal, met Khan at the Raj Bhavan, his official residence here.
The meeting comes at a time when the saffron party is facing a host of allegations, from using hawala money for the April 6 assembly polls, to bribing a co-candidate for withdrawing his nomination.
Several BJP and RSS leaders had already been questioned in connection with the highway robbery of hawala money at Kodakara in Thrissur district on April 3, three days ahead of the elections.
The ruling CPM and opposition Congress have alleged that the saffron party had used huge amounts of black money in the assembly polls, in which it had failed to win any seat.
However, the BJP, in the memorandum, accused the government of forming a Special Investigation Team (SIT) with "political intention", comprising officials having allegiance to the ruling CPM, to investigate the highway heist case.
The investigators, instead of probing the offences cited in the FIR in the crime, have been interrogating and 'harassing' BJP activists and leaders and giving an impression to the media that they were probing the financial transactions associated with the robbery incident, it alleged.
"The attempt is obviously to tarnish the image of BJP and to harass the leaders and activists," it said, adding that SIT was continuously giving motivated inputs to the media to give an impression that the money allegedly robbed was unaccounted funds of BJP which is "totally incorrect."
It also claimed that the SIT was specifically targeting K Surendran and making efforts to tarnish him and his family.
The memorandum also flayed the state police for registering a case against Surendran for allegedly threatening and bribing BSP candidate K Sundara for withdrawing his nomination for the April 6 polls.
The police, after registering the case for bailable offences, were now making efforts to incorporate non-bailable sections and to arrest and detain the BJP's state president, it alleged.
The move to arrest a responsible political leader in such a case is "totally unwarranted" and was against the directions issued by the Supreme Court for avoiding unnecessary arrests in criminal cases, it said.
"The abuse of police machinery to harass political opponents is a matter to be deprecated by constitutional authorities like the Governor," it said.
The memorandum also requested Khan to take note of the "oppressive, anti-democratic and illegal" actions of the state government and take appropriate remedial measures.
Besides Rajagopal, former Mizoram Governor Kummanam Rajasekharan and leaders P Sudheer, S Suresh and V V Rajesh were also part of the delegation.
