Union home minister Amit Shah on Saturday urged BJP workers to strive for a “Viksit Keralam” as he ripped into the CPM-led LDF government and the Congress-led UDF for engaging in corruption, following appeasement politics and turning Kerala into a haven for “anti-national forces”.

Addressing the Viksit Keralam Sammelan at the Putharikandam grounds here on Saturday, Shah said the BJP should ensure that the newly inaugurated party headquarters in the state became a seat of power for a “Viksit Keralam”.

“Viksit Bharat is not possible without the development of strong southern states and the route to Viksit Bharat is only through Viksit Keralam,” he said. “Therefore, from now on, the basic aim of the BJP will be a Viksit Keralam,” he underlined.

In support of his claim, he said the Narendra Modi government had dedicated projects, like Vizhinjam port, worth thousands of crores of rupees to the state, connected 11 districts through two Vande Bharat trains and increased the railway budget for Kerala from ₹372 crore in 2004 to ₹3,700 crore.

Shah exhorted a gathering of 25,000 ward-level BJP leaders from four southern districts to wrest the Thiruvananthapuram and Thrissur corporations from the CPM in the imminent local bodies’ elections due in December.

“In the upcoming local body elections, the NDA will contest 21,000 seats and establish a strong presence at every booth with a 25 per cent vote share. The time has come to fulfil the dream envisioned by hundreds of BJP karyakartas who were killed by Leftist goons to bring the BJP to power in Kerala,” he added.

He claimed that the NDA and the BJP would form the government in Kerala following the Assembly polls in 2026. “Both the LDF and UDF have turned Kerala into a haven for violence, corruption, vote-bank politics, appeasement and anti-national forces like the Popular Front of India (PFI),” Shah said.

The Centre had in 2022 declared the PFI, along with its associates and affiliates,
as unlawful.

Shah said the Kerala government had the power to impose a ban on the PFI and questioned why it did not do so. “When that organisation spread to various other parts of the country, it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who took the decision to ban it and ensured that its top leaders were arrested,” Shah said.

The home minister said that there were several financial scandals during the LDF rule, like the “cooperative bank scam, AI camera scam, Life Mission scam, K-FON scam, PPE-kit scheme and the one that irritates (chief minister Pinarayi) Vijayanji — the state-sponsored gold smuggling, which is the biggest scam in India”.

He said that the UDF rule also witnessed corruption cases as the Solar and Palarivattom scams, claiming that the Modi government’s 11-year administration was devoid of such scandals.

Additional reporting by PTI