Rahul Gandhi’s decision to contest from Wayanad in Kerala has certainly not gone down well for the Congress party. After Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan admonished the Congress President for the move, CPI(M) mouthpiece published an editorial fired the ‘Pappu’ jibe at him.
The editorial titled ‘Congress Collapse to be Completed with this Pappu Strike’ asserted that the scion of the Nehru-Gandhi Parivar was afraid of a defeat in Amethi. “If the Congress wanted to fight fascism, then Rahul should contest against the BJP not Left Front. By contesting in Kerala which historically supports either Congress-led government or Left Front, Rahul is conveying a message that his party’s main opposition is Left government instead of BJP,” it said.
“The fight can be viewed as nothing but a wet cracker. To put it in a flowery manner, the Congress move is a Pappu strike. This will make the party’s destruction complete,” says the editorial’s conclusion.
The Congress party was outraged over the reference. Congress MLA from Kerala, V.T. Balaram, who had once posted a video of himself eating beef to show his solidarity towards cow slaughter, demanded an apology from the daily over the matter. He claimed that the reference had shamed Malayalam media as a whole. “The ‘Desabahimani’ article is on the lines of the BJP’s culture,” said AICC general secretary and former chief minister Oommen Chandy.
Meanwhile, P.M. Manoj, the editor, said that the reference does not reflect the CPI(M)’s culture on Facebook. “The ‘Pappu’ usage was improper and we will examine how it happened,” he wrote.