Alphons slams Pinarayi Vijayan, says field day for 'extremists' and 'radicals' in Kerala

By Pragya Kaushika
New Delhi [India], December 21 (ANI): Former Union Minister and BJP MP KJ Alphons on Monday slammed Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan for allegedly lending support to "extremists" and "radicals" in the state.
He, however, agreed with Vijayan on Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) being overtaken by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and said Congress is ready to do anything for a few votes.
Alphons alleged that IUML is running the Congress-led coalition and blamed Vijayan as well for siding with 'extremist radicals'.
"The whole problem in Kerala is neither Congress-led UDF nor Left-led LDF has guts to speak against radical elements. Kerala has become the lab for IS and a maximum number of people who went to Syria are from Kerala. Unless corrective action is taken, let me warn these people radicals are going to have a field day in the state. They are already having (field day) but things are going to get much worse," warned the former Union minister.
He also added that it was "horrible" as during local body elections the candidate of Congress-led UDF said they are going to align with "radical elements" in the Muslim community and they did that.
"The Congress President of Kerala denied anything to do with radicals. But the UDF convenor said it is he who decides. It is clear they align with radical and extremists elements in Kerala," stated the BJP leader.
Speaking to ANI, the BJP MP said that Vijayan is paying pensions to Imamas which is discriminatory.
"There are thousands of mosques in Kerala. He started paying pensions. What about other priests of the temple and of the church. I am against payments for religious priests from the treasury. It is the responsibility of society and community and not of government to pay the priests," he added.
Reacting to Pinarayi's statement that IUML runs the coalition UDF and not the Congress, Alphons agreed with the Chief Minister.
"For once, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan is right. Decisions supposed to be taken by Congress-led UDF, are now being taken by IUML. This is not a new thing. They have been doing it for years. If you take UDF history whenever they came to power, IUML gets the bulk of 'profitable' portfolios be it public works, IT, industries, education," the former minister said.
"These get 70- 80 per cent of the budget. Analyse who are the beneficiaries. These beneficiaries are members of the particular community," he added. (ANI)