ADGP Ajithkumar meeting with RSS leaders a sin? asks Ram Madhav

Kozhikode (Kerala): Senior RSS leader Ram Madhav has apparently defended ADGP M R Ajithkumar's meeting with top members of his organisation last year, by asking "how can it be a sin?"

A controversy erupted in Kerala recently over the ADGP's meeting with senior RSS leaders Dattatreya Hosabale and Madhav on separate occasions last year and led to the IPS officer being stripped of the high profile Law and Order charge.

Madhav told the Manorama news channel that people should be able to meet each other freely.

"We should rise above this pettiness of thinking so-and-so is untouchable or should not be met. That is not the India we have to build, that is not the Kerala we have to build," he said on the sidelines of the art and literature festival HORTUS organised by Malayala Manorama here.

The RSS leader also said that he had once greeted Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan at an airport.

"I greeted your chief minister (Vijayan) when he was passing through an airport. So should we not greet each other?" he asked.

ADGP Ajithkumar's meeting with RSS leaders last year came to light recently and kicked off a political storm in the state with the ruling CPI(M)'s key ally, CPI, also terming it as a wrong move and demanding that he be removed from his post of ADGP Law and Order.

Faced with severe criticism from several quarters, the government finally stripped Ajithkumar of the Law and Order charge and transferred him to the ADGP Battalion post.

Regarding the BJP's historic win in Thrissur in the Lok Sabha elections, Madhav said it was not due to some deal between the BJP and the Left, but a result of the "love and support of the people for our candidate".

Actor Suresh Gopi had scripted history for the party by winning the Thrissur LS seat and ending the BJP's years-long electoral drought in the southern state.