BJP president Amit Shah, who had left for Delhi midway through the Janaraksha Yatra in Kerala for urgent consultations with the Prime Minister, is expected to rejoin on October 17, when the yatra concludes in Thiruvananthapuram.

Shah himself tweeted his decision on Friday, the fourth day of the yatra that finished its Kannur leg. The campaign was keenly watched as much for the rumblings it might trigger in the decidedly red terrain as for the size of the crowd joining in.

In the end, thousands of yatris marched peacefully through the predetermined route that, on the third yesterday, also included Pinarayi, the hometown of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Union Minister of State for Water Resources Arjun Ram Meghwal was the notable Central leader who joined the yatra on Friday.

Meanwhile, it is becoming clear how the State unit of the BJP may have got the timing of the yatra horribly wrong. The first day itself had proved a media washout thanks to breaking news of Malayalam actor Dileep getting bail in a controversial rape case.

That, of course, could not have been anticipated. However, the next couple of days didn’t garner it much media bandwidth either.

This is because the front page of most Malayalam dailies devoted acres of space to the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in football-crazy Kerala that kicked off on Friday. Coverage of the yatra was limited to the fringes.

War of words

The war of words between the ruling CPI(M) and the BJP continued on Friday with Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, State secretary of the CPI(M), firing a fresh salvo from Kozhikode, where the BJP yatra goes next.

He told newspersons there that the BJP has been able to grow and thrive in only those States where his party is non-existent. The BJP seems to have prospered also on the back of a terminal degradation in the fortunes of the Congress as a political party, he added.

The day also saw BJP leader K Surendran countering Balakrishnan, who had earlier poked fun of Shah.

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