AICC general secretary K C Venugopal
Venugopal recalled that when he raised the issue in Parliament in 2015, the then Union health minister had said Keralam would get AIIMS the following year.
Kottayam: AICC general secretary KC Venugopal MP said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah ’s efforts to protect chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar will ultimately lead to their downfall. Criticising Centre’s stand on AIIMS for Keralam, Venugopal said conditions in places where the institute had been sanctioned showed that the objections raised against Keralam had no real basis. He said Keralam had no place in the BJP’s political agenda and that the party’s state unit should be disbanded. The promise remained unfulfilled, he said, and expressed hope that if the BJP govt failed to sanction it within two years, an INDIA bloc govt would do so.
He said the INDIA bloc was fighting to safeguard citizens’ voting rights. Opposition leaders had recently met President to convey their concerns and has also decided to meet Chief Justice of India, he said. Asked about the court direction to register an FIR against leader of the opposition Pinarayi Vijayan , Venugopal said the law and court orders applied equally to everyone.
He likened the PM to a protagonist heading for defeat. Speaking to reporters in Alappuzha on Saturday, Venugopal said Modi had been rattled by the opposition’s protests, citing the closure of Metro stations in Delhi to curb demonstrators as an example. A large protest would be held in Delhi on Monday, and Congress and the alliance would continue the struggle until the electoral process was made flawless, he added.