It looks like Congress's Muvattupuzha MLA Mathew Kuzhalnadan has the instincts of a sea turtle or a salmon. Give him the most non-controversial topic and, like the aquatic animals that navigate back without much trouble to their spawning grounds from distant corners of the ocean, Kuzhalnadan will find a way to get back to the subject he seems to feel completely at home with: Pinarayi Vijayan bashing.

In the Assembly on Thursday, there was a combined discussion on two industry-related bills: The Kerala Industrial Single Window Clearance Boards and Industrial Township Area Development (Amendment) Bill, 2024, and The Kerala Micro Small and Medium Enterprises and Other Enterprises Facilitation (Amendment) Bill, 2024. The contents of the bills seemed miles away from the controversies that have rocked the Pinarayi ministry, be it the PR agency, Thrissur Pooram or the ADGP-RSS links.

Still, Kuzhalnadan found a way to target the CM and his family. He started from Kerala's industrial sector, spoke about the government hopelessly swearing by primitive land use laws that have rendered plantations and private industrial parks useless, talked of the need for "substantial pathbreaking" policy reforms, and under the cover of citing an example he navigated his way to the government's refusal to increase nursing seats in Kerala that, in turn, has caused aspirants to migrate to other states like Karnataka and from that convenient perch, Kuzhalnadan pushed his way to his destination: the CM's brazen hypocrisy.

And for this, he appropriated a name from which the CPM has for long drawn great emotional and political strength. Comrade Pushpan, the living martyr who died on September 29 after lying paralysed for nearly three decades in the wake of the brutal Koothuparamba firing on November 24, 1994.

"Whoever had sacrificed his life for a slogan or a cause had always stood for a truth and an ideal. Pushpan was also like that," Kuzhalnadan said, and posed a rhetorical question: "Which was the truth and ideal that Pushpan sacrificed his life for? Don't you remember?"

For dramatic effect, he repeated the last line. "Don't you remember?" "He was in the forefront of the struggle led by the SFI and DYFI against self financing colleges. He was shot at during the Koothuparamba firing and had been living as good as dead, paralysed and bedridden, for decades and now he is dead. Here was a man who had given his life as water and manure to prevent privatisation and commercialisation of higher education," Kuzhalnadan said.

He conceded that the firing was ordered by the then UDF government led by K Karunakaran. "When the DYFI and SFI unleashed a violent attack to prevent Karunakaran and M V Raghavan (then cooperation minister) to participate in a programme at Koothuparamba, the government was forced to fire at them. Five died, and Pushpan was paralysed," Kuzhalnadan said and pounced on the CM.

"While Pushpan was half dead on his bed and the blood on the five martyrs was still fresh, your CM sent his son to a self-financing college. His daughter, too, followed suit." By then the ruling benches were aflame. CPM's Azhikode MLA K V Sumesh said Kuzhalnadan was trying to mislead the House. He agreed that the Koothuparamba agitation was against the privatisation of education but added that it was also against the growing unemployment in Kerala.

"If the Koothuparamba agitation was against unemployment, let the DYFI and SFI leaders who led the agitation say. All of them are right here, seated in the front row of the ruling side," Kuzhalnadan shot back. "In the last Budget, finance minister K N Balagopal declared that you are keen to welcome foreign universities," he said.

Provoked, parliamentary affairs minster M B Rajesh accused Kuzhalnadan of using the floor to settle personal scores. Speaker A N Shamseer who walked right into the chaos remarked: "You are constantly using the floor of the House as a platform for provocation. It has become an habit with you to always go out of syllabus while speaking in the House."

"Is this fair what you are doing to me," Kuzhalnadan asked. "It is not fair at all, what you are talking," the Speaker retorted. "Whenever I speak you complain that I go out of syllabus. But you have not said this about anybody else in this House. The Chair should check whether it is fair to single me out like this," Kuzhalnadan said. "The Chair has no personal grievance against anyone," the Speaker said.