After CM snubs KSU president, Home Minister prods Satheesan to resolve matters

Kannur: Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala appeared to signal that Chief Minister V D Satheesan should personally address the grievances of the Kerala Students' Union (KSU), the Congress's student wing, which has been opposing the appointment of lawyers with SFI and RSS backgrounds as government pleaders.

Chennithala's remarks came amid growing friction between the Chief Minister and the KSU, after Satheesan refused to grant an audience to the student organisation's state president, Aloysius Xavier, and appeared to snub him at a public function.

Speaking to reporters in Kannur on Saturday, July 18, Chennithala said he believed that if the KSU had any complaints, "Satheesan himself would take the initiative to resolve them".

The KSU clearly has grievances. Xavier has publicly maintained that he would continue to raise the issue of the government's appointments of government pleaders. The Law Department, headed by Satheesan, picked former SFI leader Adv Jiona James and RSS activist and former ABVP leader Adv Sarath D S as government pleaders in the High Court.

Despite the growing acrimony between the KSU and the Chief Minister, Chennithala said there were no problems involving the student organisation. But, in a carefully worded remark, he stressed that the Chief Minister was accessible to everyone. “If KSU members have an opinion, there is nothing wrong with them expressing it. They have done so in the past as well. There are certain ways of doing it. If they meet the Chief Minister and tell him, he will consider it,” said Chennithala. His remarks appeared to make a case for a meeting between the Chief Minister and KSU leaders.

He then contrasted the KSU's grievances with the alleged differences within the Left Democratic Front. “Compared with the disputes between the CPM and CPI, what dispute is there in the Congress? The biggest problems are in the LDF. They are not even able to convene a meeting of the front,” he said.

Chennithala's remarks come a week after Satheesan dismissed the KSU's objections to the appointments, saying the student organisation had no role in the selection of government pleaders.

The Chief Minister's remarks upset the KSU. Karthik Rajendran, president of the KSU unit at Government Law College, Thiruvananthapuram, said Satheesan's statement had affected the morale of the organisation's activists.

On Wednesday, Xavier sought an appointment with the Chief Minister, but the meeting did not take place. Xavier later said the Chief Minister had been busy. The following day, at a function at Sacred Heart College, Thevara, Satheesan appeared to walk past Xavier without acknowledging him. Videos of the event showed Xavier waiting as the Chief Minister passed by.

Later, speaking to reporters, Xavier showed no signs of backing off. He said the government had made a "minor lapse in the appointment of a government pleader" and that the KSU had only pointed it out so that it could be corrected. “It is not criticism. If the government finds that it was wrong, then we are going to keep repeating that wrong. I will try to meet the Chief Minister again and share my concerns,” Xavier said.

His statements on social media have been more combative. “If pointing a finger at wrongdoing is defiance, then we are a bunch of defiant people!” Xavier wrote on Facebook on July 15.

On July 10, he wrote that a policy that sidelined those who had done the hard work could not be accepted. “All these years, our arguments and protests have been for those who shed blood on the streets as KSU activists and those who were booked in cases. I have no intention of arguing for any personal government benefit. But attempts to pretend that KSU colleagues do not exist cannot be accepted,” he wrote.

He also criticised what he described as the failure of party leaders to respond to KSU activists who sought their intervention.

“For the past 10 years, these leaders repeatedly called on us to protest and raise our voices against the Pinarayi Vijayan government. It is a wrong trend that they now refuse to answer the calls of KSU colleagues who seek their intervention on their behalf,” Xavier wrote.

He called for the decision to appoint as government pleaders members of a group that had allegedly led repeated assaults on KSU activists at Thiruvananthapuram Law College to be corrected.

“Since colleagues who love the party may ask why I am responding publicly, I cannot refrain from explaining that as well. If you don't speak up, you don't get heard,” he wrote.

Congress sources acknowledged that Adv Jiona James had been an SFI leader at Thiruvananthapuram Law College. They, however, said that she had been associated with the Congress's frontal organisation, Lawyers' Congress, since 2022. The sources also said she had been appointed based on the recommendation of a senior Congress leader from Kannur.

Adv Sarath D S was an RSS activist and a former ABVP leader at Thrissur Law College, where he was active between 2004 and 2009. He has also appeared for BJP workers accused in criminal cases.