After the unintended mirth spread by the 'arrest of the mike, amplifier and cable', it was expected the CPM would quickly bury the issue and contain the embarrassment. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had done well to ask his police officers to drop the case against the 'mike'.
But now it looks like the left party is in no mood to let the ear-piercing sound of the howler die. According to the party, making the mike howl during the KPCC meeting held in memory of former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy was indeed part of a conspiracy against the Chief Minister: it was in fact Plan C.
Plan A, according to the CPM mouthpiece Deshabhimani, was to somehow provoke the Chief Minister into boycotting the Chandy remembrance meet.
A Deshabhimani report said the Congress' digital media convenor Sarin P and MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan posted humiliating comments about the Chief Minister. According to Deshabhimani, here is what Sarin said: "If Pinarayi Vijayan attends the function as a mere speaker, it will be the confession of the witchhunt that he had ordered against Oommen Chandy."
Kuzhalnadan also revealed the Congress was divided about inviting the Chief Minister to the function. Kuzhalnadan further divulged that KPCC president K Sudhakaran deeply resented the invite sent out to the Chief Minister.
"It was anticipated that such humiliating statements would make the Chief Minister stay away from the function. Once the Chief Minister backed out, the plan was to let loose a campaign saying that he had insulted Oommen Chandy," the Deshabhimani report said.
"But this plan misfired when the Chief Minister, in the interests of political decency and also out of his deep personal respect for Oommen Chandy, decided to attend the function," it added.
Then, Plan B was pressed into service. "They (Congress) devised ways to provoke and insult the Chief Minister during the function," the CPM mouthpiece noted.
The strategy was to annoy the Chief Minister, make him utter something in rage and then use these words to kick up a political storm against him.
KPCC chief Sudhakaran, who spoke before Pinarayi, was indeed provocative.
"Oommen Chandy stood unfazed and without rancour when battered by unprecedented and irrational agitations and in the face of a barrage of the wildest charges," Sudhakaran said, a clear reference to the allegations against Chief Minister Chandy during the Solar scandal and the agitations mounted by the CPM demanding his resignation.
"No leader has ever been hounded by political rivals the way Oommen Chandy was," Sudhakaran said.
"Not for once has Oommen Chandy responded angrily to those who had sought to humiliate him by hurling substandard allegations. That was the man's greatness. Here was a political leader who took on the vendors of hate with love," the KPCC chief went on to say.
These words were rousing enough for some young Congress activists to scream 'Ooomen Chandy ki jai' just as Pinarayi moved to speak. However, Pinarayi rose to the occasion and said only nice and warm things about his predecessor.
The Deshabhimani report said Sudhakaran's speech was the crucial part of the Plan B offensive. "It was from a written speech that Sudhakaran delivered. This in itself is a sign of conspiracy," the Deshabhimani report said. "Or else why would he need a prepared speech to talk about Oommen Chandy with whom he had a long association," it said.
It was then, when the Chief Minister got up to speak, that the slogan-shouting began. "Why were there no slogans when the other speeches were on," the Deshabhimani report said. "And it stopped, like it was switched off, when young Turks like V T Balram raised their hand," it added with sarcasm.
Now comes Plan C. "Just when the Chief Minister resumed his speech unmindful of all this, a discordant noise erupted from the mike," the report said."This was an attempt to disrupt Pinarayi's speech by making it seem like it was a technical glitch," it added.
The mike operator S Ranjith had told the media that the howling was caused when, in the rush, people trampled upon the cables. According to the Deshabhimani report, the mike operator had told the police that only mediapersons were near him when this happened.
The needle of suspicion is turned towards the media. The report expresses suspicion that the Congress had put in place the Plan C with the help of journalists. "It will be no surprise if journalists had a hand in creating such a controversy," the report said.
