The Kerala unit of the BJP has embarked on its ambitious ‘Janaraksha yatra’, flagged off by party president Amit Shah, at Payyannur in the northern-most district of Kasaragod, on Tuesday.

The 15-day yatra is scheduled to end in Thiruvananthapuram in the south on October 17, but will have caught the attention of the nation for, if nothing else, the list of party bigwigs being roped in to join it at various stages.

These include the Chief Ministers of BJP-ruled States, such as Yogi Adityanath of Uttar Pradesh, and Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, Ananth Kumar, Smriti Irani, Dharmendra Pradhan, Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and VK Singh.

According to PTI, Adityanath will join the march on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Shah will join party workers in the march as it passes through Pinarayi, the hometown of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, to make the intentions of the party clear. The yatra is being led by Kummanam Rajasekharan, State president of the BJP.

Aggressive line Observers here say the BJP may have given up its soft Hindutva line adopted during the 2016 Assembly elections that yielded it just one seat, instead of the dozen that Shah had reportedly wanted. There are enough indications that the party has decided to opt for a more aggressive line that aligns better with the one that it has tested in the North to resounding results.

The line will, however, be tweaked to adjust to local realities and draw in the influential Christian community more than, say, Muslims. Union Minister Alphons Kannanthanam will be a major player in the BJP game here.

Comments by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat during his Dasara address, when he bracketed Kerala along with West Bengal for ‘siding with the jihadi elements’, gives the perfect background for the yatra. Shah and other leaders have dropped loud hints about how they will seek to rally BJP cadres and sympathisers around the clarion call to ‘liberate the State from anti-national elements.’

He has already made his intentions, clear saying Vijayan will be accountable for the 13 lives that the BJP has lost after the CPI(M) government rode to power in 2016.

“I am asking Chief Minister Vijayan: Who has killed BJP and RSS workers in Kerala? If he does not have answers, then I am saying that Chief Minister Vijayan is himself responsible for the killings,” thundered Shah today.

Communal trouble According to the BJP, it is not just the ‘criminalised politics’ of the CPI(M) but also the ‘jihadi’ elements it has helped spawn that the party will highlight as campaigning points during the yatra.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) has lambasted the BJP for taking out the yatra with the intention of fomenting communal trouble in the State. Kannur district secretary P Jayarajan said Shah should first organise a march in the BJP-ruled States of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, where there is ‘no law and order.’

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