CPI takes another swipe at ally CPM in Kerala, warns its student wing becoming a ‘liability’

In the aftermath of the Lok Sabha poll debacle for the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala, the churning continues. On Thursday, the CPI came out strongly against the young wing of senior partner CPI(M), the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), over incidents of violence at college campuses.

This was the second time in the last seven days that the CPI, which drew a blank in the recent Lok Sabha elections, the second time in a row, has pointed fingers at the CPI(M), saying the latter requires to mend its ways to reverse the electoral setback.

CPI state secretary Binoy Viswam said that unless the SFI did so, it would become a “liability” for the Left. “The SFI is following a barbaric culture, which does not go with the style of functioning of a student outfit. They don’t know the meaning of the word Left,” he told the media in Alappuzha Thursday.

The CPI’s latest condemnation of the CPI(M) followed the alleged manhandling of the principal of Gurudev College, Kozhikode, by SFI workers after he questioned the presence of outsiders at the outfit’s helpdesk for new students.

Later, the SFI took out a march to the college, in which one of the speakers said: “If required, we’ll make a hearth on the principal’s chest.” DYFI Kozhikode district leader B P Prabeesh was allegedly heard threatening: “If the SFI decides (to attack), the scoundrel (the principal, Sunil Bhaskar) would have to be helped out of the campus by others.”

In another incident, this time on the Kerala University campus in Thiruvananthapuram, an activist of the Congress’s student wing, the Kerala Students’ Union, was allegedly attacked by a group of SFI activists.

For many, the incidents were a reminder of when SFI activists had prepared a symbolic “grave” of the