Vande Mataram fallout: Union shipping minister refuses to attend Vizhinjam Port EXIM launch

The launch of EXIM (Export-Import) operations at Vizhinjam International Seaport on Tuesday turned out to be the venue of the first major political conflict between the V D Satheesan-led UDF government and the Centre.

Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal, who had never missed official events that marked the various stages of the Vizhinjam Port, kept away from the EXIM launch. Along with him, the two invited BJP MLAs, V Muraleedharan and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and Thiruvananthapuram Mayor VV Rajesh also boycotted the event.

Official BJP sources said this was retaliation for the state government's decision not to sing Vande Mataram at the official Independence Day function. "It was the state's disrespect for the laws passed by Parliament that forced the union minister to take such an unprecedented step," a top BJP source said.

On Independence Day itself, BJP state president Rajeev Chandrasekhar said the non-rendering of the national song was a "violation of law" and warned that there would be consequences. "This may be legal, political or politico-legal," Chandrasekhar said, and added: "The Congress had succumbed to the diktats of the Muslim League and Jamaat-e-Islami."

The Centre has ordered that the national song should be played first, and in full, during major events like Independence Day.

The UDF government had till now shown no signs of wanting to aggressively take on the Centre. Its two major documents - the Budget Speech and the White Paper - had nothing in them to provoke the Modi dispensation.

This non-adversarial approach is also reflected in the UDF government's decision to join the second phase of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U 2.0) and also its seeming eagerness to be part of PM-SHRI. This had even caused the LDF to allege a secret Congress-BJP deal.

The refusal to sing Vande Mataram and the consequent boycott of the EXIM launch could mark the end of an unofficial truce that held between the freshly sworn-in UDF government and the Centre.

Besides the Union minister, Opposition Leader Pinarayi Vijayan also skipped the event. It looked like the LDF was merely following an 'Opposition tradition' at the Vizhinjam Port. During the LDF tenure, then Opposition Leader V D Satheesan had boycotted most port-related events. The UDF grouse was that the LDF government had refused to acknowledge the seminal role played by Oommen Chandy in the development of the port and attempted to corner all the credit.

On Tuesday, it was a payback moment. Chief Minister Satheesan used the occasion to discredit the LDF government's contributions. "There are so many things left incomplete in the construction of the port. The state government has many obligations. We failed to meet them in the last ten years. If we had achieved the road and rail connectivity in the last ten years, our gains from the port would have been a hundred times more than what we would get now," he said, and added: "We are late. But it is not too late. This is the right time to start our work."

Interestingly, it was not just the BJP and the CPM leaders who kept away from the Vizhinjam EXIM launch. Two UDF ministers - health minister K Muraleedharan and transport minister CP John - were missing. Even Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor, who was unofficially the port's global ambassador, was also absent.

Tharoor has at least posted about the EXIM launch on his social media handles. "A historic day for India’s coastal development as Thiruvananthapuram’s @PortOfVizhinjam starts direct export-import operations! Mumbai has the “Gateway of India” — Thiruvananthapuram offers a “Gateway to India"!," Tharoor's says on X.

There is no trace of Vizhinjam on either Muraleedharan's or John's social media pages.