Youth Congress and DYFI activists staged a protest during the foundation stone-laying ceremony of a skill development centre for intellectually challenged children in Palakkad, opposing the municipality’s decision to name the centre after RSS ideologue and founder K.B. Hedgewar.
Youth Congress workers, joined by DYFI activists, protested by standing inside the pit dug for the foundation stone-laying ceremony, destroying the foundation stone plaque, and symbolically planting a plantain tree in its place.
The project, located within Palakkad municipality limits and spread across 30 cents of land, is being developed with financial assistance of ₹1.5 crore from the CSR fund of a private corporate firm, Oceanus Dwellings.
The DYFI and the Congress alleged that the municipality is attempting to propagate Hindutva ideology by naming the centre after the RSS ideologue.
“BJP-ruled municipality is deliberately attempting to saffronise Kerala,” they said.
“Can someone who was jailed for plucking coconuts be called a freedom fighter? This isn’t the ancestral land of RSS. A centre named after Hedgewar will not be built in Palakkad,” said MLA Rahul Mamkootathil.
“This is not Gujarat, this is Kerala,” said DYFI demonstrators.
The BJP has been ruling the Palakkad Municipality since 2015.
Municipal Chairperson Prameela Sasidharan asserted that “The building in Palakkad Municipality will be named after Dr. Hedgewar. There will be no change in that.”
As the protest escalated, police arrested the agitating activists.
