Kannur (Kerala), Apr 7 (PTI) Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday hit back at his Telangana counterpart Revanth Reddy as the verbal war between the two leaders took a sharper turn.
Reacting to earlier remarks made by Reddy at a meet-the-press porgramme here, the veteran Marxist leader said that a chief minister must maintain basic standards of conduct and questioned whether such dignity was being followed.
Without going into a detailed reply, the chief minister said that he would respond at the right time.
In his response to the media to a query, Vijayan used words that were seen as nearly derogatory in Malayalam to call Reddy, signalling his strong disapproval of the remarks made against him.
The controversy began after Reddy used the words “nee po mone Vijaya” while referring to Vijayan on April 1 during a UDF campaign roadshow in Nemom constituency in Thiruvananthapuram ahead of the Assembly polls.
Addressing party workers, he used the popular Malayalam film dialogue from ‘Narasimham’, starring Mohanlal.
Invoking the famous line “Nee po mone Dinesha”, he adapted it to target Vijayan, saying “Nee po mone Vijaya”, which drew loud cheers from the crowd.
Reddy went further, claiming that Vijayan’s “time is over” and that his “expiry date has passed”.
“Your time is over. Your expiry date is over. You don’t have any time to continue. Now, the UDF’s time has come,” he had said during the roadshow.
Responding to these allegations earlier, Vijayan had said that the Telangana CM was “misinformed” and accused him of “ridiculing” Kerala and its people while trying to hide the weaknesses of his own state.
In a later response, Reddy defended his remarks and said that many of the statistics cited by Vijayan were taken from the NITI Aayog SDG Index 2023–24, arguing that the data was already outdated.
Single-phase elections to the 140-seat Kerala Assembly will be held on April 9. PTI TGB KH
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