Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] Kerala State secretariat on Tuesday (August 18, 2026) accused the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) government of voluntarily ceding the reins of administration to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)-controlled Lok Bhavan, without even a whimper of protest.

CPI(M) State secretary M.V. Govindan said it was startling and politically revelatory that the UDF had not, so far, raised any objection to Keralam Governor Rajendra Arlekar summoning the State Police Chief, brazenly sidestepping the constitutionally mandated executive prerogative of the elected government.

In contrast, Mr. Govindan said, the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) government had objected in writing several times to stymie Lok Bhavan’s repeated attempts to trespass on the constitutional provision, which severely restricted the Governor’s discretionary powers and stringently bound the gubernatorial office’s exercise of authority to the counsel of the Council of Ministers.

Mr. Govindan said the previous Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had stopped heads of departments from answering Lok Bhavan’s arbitrary summons, without the political executive’s consent.

He said the UDF’s “surrender of executive power” to the Governor indicated a larger and socially perilous political malaise plaguing the Congress at its apex level. The CPI(M) State secretariat has noted with alarm the Congress national leadership’s majoritarian drift and its embrace of a soft version of Hindutva that seeks to mimic the Sangh Parivar’s political agenda subtly.

Mr. Govindan said the Congress high command had unabashedly presided over the rendering of the Vande Mataram in full at the party’s national headquarters in New Delhi on Independence Day. The current leadership has given the short shrift to the Congress decision in 1937, piloted by Jawaharlal Nehru, to limit the rendering of the song to the first two stanzas, given their inclusiveness, and avoid the rest of the composition for their deification of Hindu gods and portrayal of the country as a patently Hindu nation.

Mr. Govindan said the Congress governments in Karnataka, Telangana and Himachal Pradesh had rendered the song in full during the Independence Day celebrations, with tacit approval of the party’s national leadership.

He said the Congress’s tacit Hindutva was evident in the UDF government’s refusal to condemn appointment of temporary Vice-Chancellors to State-funded universities by Mr. Arlerkar, the Chancellor of Universities, and in entrenched attempts to inject the Sangh Parivar narrative into Kerala’s progressive and secular higher education sector.

Mr. Govindan said the UDF government colluded with the pro-RSS Chancellor to arrest and jail students, including those who staged theatrical protests, on trumped-up and hyperbolic charges of waylaying the Vice Chancellor and rioting.

Published - August 18, 2026 07:32 pm IST