Thiruvananthapuram, August 15
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Kerala unit on Saturday threatened legal and political action against the UDF government for allegedly omitting Vande Mataram from the State’s official Independence Day celebrations.
BJP State general secretary S. Suresh accused the government of insulting the national song by excluding it from the ceremony attended by Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan in Thiruvananthapuram.
Suresh pointed out that Vande Mataram had been rendered in full during the Independence Day programme at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi. The BJP welcomed the Congress leadership’s decision to include the song in its celebrations, he said.
He argued that when senior Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi had no objection to singing Vande Mataram, the Congress-led government in Kerala could not justify leaving it out of the official programme.
The BJP leader alleged that the decision reflected the political influence of the Indian Union Muslim League and Jamaat-e-Islami over the Satheesan government. He claimed the Chief Minister was being guided neither by the traditions of the Congress nor by constitutional and political responsibilities.
Suresh said the BJP would examine the legal remedies available to challenge the omission. The party would also launch a political campaign across the State and demand a clear explanation from the Chief Minister, he added.
The controversy erupted after Vande Mataram was not featured at the State government’s main Independence Day ceremony. The national anthem, Jana Gana Mana, was performed as part of the official programme.
The BJP alleged that the omission was deliberate and called upon the government to disclose the circumstances that led to the decision. It maintained that excluding the national song from such an important event amounted to disrespecting the country’s nationalist heritage.
The UDF government had not issued a detailed response to the allegations at the time of reporting.
