New Delhi, Dec. 2: CPM general secretary Prakash Karat today waded into the raging “politicians versus the perfumed” battle taking place on a television screen near you.

Karat expressed regrets for the controversial remarks made by his senior politburo colleague and Kerala chief minister, V.S. Achuthanandan, on his aborted attempt to pay condolences to the family of an NSG commando slain by terrorists in Mumbai.

The “apology” may have earned Karat — usually regarded as a hardline ideologue — rare praise from the electronic media but seems to have caused some consternation within Left circles and, ironically, galvanised support for the Kerala veteran. In a brief statement issued from Rajasthan, Karat said: “Certain remarks made by V.S. Achuthanandan are regrettable. I have spoken to him over phone from Rajasthan. He has assured that he had no other intention but to go to the home of Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who was brutally killed by terrorists in Mumbai, to pay homage and to condole with the family.”

Karat was referring to the remarks made by the Kerala chief minister to a television channel yesterday after he was unceremoniously thrown out of Unnikrishnan’s Bangalore residence where he — along with state home minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan — had gone to pay condolences.

Sandeep Unnikrishnan’s father refused to allow the chief minister to enter his house and was caught on TV, shouting: “Get out, get out dog.”

It later transpired that he was angry because Achuthanandan, unlike his Karnataka counterpart B.S. Yeddyurappa, had not turned up on the day of Sandeep’s funeral. The father felt that the Kerala CM showed up late only because of criticism in the Malayalam media, and in any case he was in too “mentally disturbed” a state to be civil and gracious to a politician.

Responding to questions on the treatment he had received at the Unnikrishnan home, an angry Achuthanandan told the TV channel that he had only gone to pay homage to a martyr and went on to say: “Not a dog would have visited the residence had it not been for the slain officer.” Although Achuthanandan’s supporters feel that this is a common enough expression in Malayalam and does not sound as offensive as it does in English, his bosses in Delhi felt otherwise.

Karat, sources said, felt the remark was in poor taste and unbecoming of a chief minister and had put the party in an awkward position. That is why he issued the statement as a measure of damage control.

But far from containing the damage, it appears to have further fuelled the anti-politician hysteria being propagated on TV channels with fresh demands that Achuthanandan step down as chief minister. Even railway minister Lalu Prasad said the CPM politburo should serve a quit notice on the chief minister.

Such demands have unleashed a barrage of pro-Achuthanandan sentiment within the Left, and even the anti-VS camp followers in Kerala are united in defending the chief minister in private, sources said.

These sections pointed out that the veteran Kerala leader did not belong to the ranks of publicity-hungry, television-savvy politicians who rush to every demonstration and funeral to offer the right sound bites. He has been in the forefront of numerous people’s struggles in his battle-scarred career spanning several decades and should have been treated with a little more respect at the Unnikrishnan home.

One email doing the rounds recalls the courageous role he played in the famous Punnapra-Vayalar agitation back in October 1946 and blames the media for creating the atmosphere that led to his humiliation in Bangalore.

“Obviously, Unnikrishnan was influenced, apart from the great grief of losing his son, by the general anti-politician tirade of the mainstream media. The insect called “Enough is Enough” appears to have bitten him too,” the email says.

Another quotes Ashok Mitra’s famous “I am a communist, not a gentleman” to make the point that Achuthanandan was a hero for the being the former, not the latter.

Some also feel that Karat need not have issued a unilateral statement (as opposed to a response to a query) or given a more detailed response, putting the whole episode in context.

But, sources clarified, the statement should not be seen as an endorsement to the anti-politician campaign fostered by the “bourgeois” media. That will be countered separately.