When Kerala Chief Minister Pinayari Vijayan rudely dismissed reporters from a venue on Monday, where he had called for a peace meeting of senior CPI (M) and BJP leaders it didn’t go down well with the press.
The chief minister reportedly lost his cool when he saw a large contingent of media persons in the venue and told them ‘Kadakku Purathu’ (get out). Only after the journalists left the venue, the CM entered the hall.
The CMO justified the CM’s outburst by saying that the media was not invited there. While the media in the state registered their protests through newspapers, news channels and social media platforms it was Malayalam Manorama’s headlines that stole the show.
The leading Malayalam daily carried the phrase ‘Kadakku Purathu’ as a part of all their front page headlines. The first half of the page of the newspaper on Monday carried four news stories--a story on LPG Subsidy, the story of the CM shouting at the media, a story on the CPI (M) and BJP deciding to tackle violence in their parties and a story on Chinese soldiers transgressed into Uttarakhand. And in all these four stories, the headline carried the phrase ‘Kadakku Purathu’.
The first headline read ‘Central Government to LPG Subsidy - Kadakku Purathu’. The second one was about CM shouting at the journalists and the headline read ‘Chief Minister to media – Kadakku Purathu’.
The chief minister had called for a peace meeting of senior CPI (M) and BJP leaders to tackle political violence in their parties in the wake of repeated violent incidents in different districts of Kerala. This meeting was called after the murder of E Rajesh, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker, in Sreekaryam of Thiruvananthapuram.
In the peace meeting, both party leaders decided to cooperate and avoid further violence in the parties. Reporting this, Manorama carried the headline, ‘CPI (M) and BJP says to violence, Kadakku Purathu’.
The newspaper also included the CM’s retort in the headline of the report on Chinese soldiers transgressed to Uttarakhand. The headline says, ‘China transgressed in Uttarakhand – Kadakku Purathu’.