UDF said ‘look up’, DYFI says ‘draw the sponsor’: After Pinarayi’s hoardings, Satheesan’s chartered flight row inspires new satirical protest

Kochi: If you know who footed the bill for the Chief Minister’s chartered flight, DYFI wants you to draw him. And if you don’t, that’s quite all right; your imagination will do just fine.

And the prize for the best sketch? An emergency light. Everyone who participates gets a candle.

That is how the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) plans to protest Chief Minister V D Satheesan’s refusal to identify the phantom sponsor who arranged his chartered flight: by turning an evasive press meet and unresolved, or rather ‘I-won’t-answer’-type, political question into a statewide drawing contest.

On Thursday, the Left youth front will set up its drawing protest at block centres across Kerala, inviting people to sketch the faceless “acquaintance” whom Satheesan has said arranged the aircraft for his emergency journey to flashflood-hit Malappuram, after the state helicopter’s lease lapsed.

Announcing the protest in Thiruvananthapuram, DYFI State Secretary M Vijin took a swipe at the Chief Minister over his refusal to disclose the sponsor’s identity, comparing the government’s stance to that of a child who, even after being caught, insists on repeating the act.

“When they were in Opposition, they claimed there was no money to build houses for the disaster-hit in Wayanad, and they had no sponsors then. Now that power has reached their hands, this administration has turned into one where sponsors are overflowing,” Vijin said.

If the premise sounds like a live-action political cartoon, the DYFI method borrows from a familiar UDF playbook. The Left youth front appears to have taken a cue from an ambush engineered by its rivals during the 2026 Assembly elections.

Back then, amid allegations over missing gold from the Sabarimala temple, the UDF staged an ambient masterstroke. Pavement stickers laid down at busy pedestrian bottlenecks across Kerala carried an innocuous invitation: “If you want to know who stole the temple gold, stand here and look up”. Pedestrians who followed the instructions found themselves staring straight into the eyes of towering government hoardings featuring then Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

With a sticker on the pavement, a glance upwards, and the UDF effortlessly turned the LDF hoardings into jokes with strong political undertones. Now comes what looks like a tit-for-tat version.

The UDF had used the pavement to make people look up. DYFI is using it to make people draw. Even the choice of prizes keeps the joke going. The emergency light and the candles add to the satire, as Kerala grapples with the electricity crisis and resultant power cuts, which is keeping people sweltering in the dark.

The UDF’s election stunt needed little more than a pavement sticker and someone else’s hoarding. DYFI’s counter-offensive needs a paper, a pen and a mystery man who, so far, exists only as an unnamed ‘acquaintance’.

So if earlier, Kerala’s political joke was: ‘look up ’, then on Thursday, the instruction is more direct: ‘draw the sponsor’.