Bengaluru: He was expelled from both the Congress and the CPI(M) for praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now A.P. Abdullakutty, two-time Congress MLA and two-time CPI(M) MP from Kannur in Kerala, has finally joined his ‘role model’.
Abdullakutty, who often portrays himself as the minority face of whichever party he is in, joined the BJP Wednesday. He called himself a ‘national Muslim’ as soon as he was inducted into the party.
“My main aim is to bridge the gap between the Muslims and the BJP in Kerala and ensure the best opportunities for minorities,” Kutty told ThePrint.
Union Minister V. Muraleedharan, the former head of the BJP’ Kerala unit, said Kutty’s induction would help bring Muslims closer to the BJP. “I feel he will at least be able to remove the animosity that Muslims have towards the BJP in Kerala,” Muraleedharan told ThePrint.
‘BJP desperate in Kerala’
Other parties in the state say Kutty joining the BJP is a sign of the party’s desperation to make political gains in Kerala, one of the few states where it won no seats in the Lok Sabha elections.
“The BJP is making desperate attempts to get people in Kerala,” CPI(M) leader and former Palakkad MP M.B. Rajesh said. “So now, they are even ready to stoop to the level of admitting people like Abdullakutty, who have absolutely no credibility.”
Another senior CPI(M) leader and former Kerala minister M.A. Baby said Kutty was given due recognition when he was with the Left, but still chose to make statements that were “unbecoming of a CPM leader”.
“Now the situation is such that if you praise Modi, you may get a place in the BJP,” Baby said. “The BJP is Modi and Modi is BJP, just like the days of the Emergency. It won’t be long before Modi is made synonymous with India, just as Dev Kant Barooah (then Congress president) said Indira Gandhi is synonymous to India.”
Expelled twice
Kutty had risen up the ranks in the CPI(M), and spent nearly two decades with the party. As a young leader, he was associated with the Kannur unit of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the CPI(M)’s student wing.
He went on to become the MP from Kannur in 1999, bringing an end to the winning streak of senior Congress leader Mullappally Ramachandran, who is now the Kerala Congress chief. Kutty was just 31 then. He retained the seat in 2004.
Kutty was expelled from the CPI(M) in 2009 after he praised the ‘Gujarat model’ of development when Modi was chief minister. The CPI(M)’s Kannur district committee said it sacked him for “repeated breach of discipline by joining the class enemies”. A source in the party said there were corruption charges against Kutty and the Modi remark gave the party an opportunity to expel him.
Kutty was, however, inducted into the Congress overnight and won the Kannur assembly seat for the party in 2011 and 2016.
Earlier this month, he lost his Congress membership after writing a Facebook post titled ‘On Narendra Modi’s impressive victory’, following the NDA’s massive win in the Lok Sabha elections.
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