BJP president Amit Shah speaks at his party's protest outside the Kerala Secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram.
Thousands of BJP workers braved the rain this morning as the party decided to make its presence felt in the state with a protest against the alleged UDF corruption and scams outside the state secretariat.
The protest took place as party chief Amit Shah visited Thiruvananthapuram and held a brainstorming session with the local leaders to prepare for the local body elections this year and the Assembly elections in 2016.
Not a single BJP man has been elected to the Kerala Assembly till date - the state has regularly swung between the CPM-led Left Democratic Front and Congress-led United Democratic Front. In the current assembly, 72 of the legislators are from the UDF and 68 from the LDF.
"As people of Kerala will be voting for a new government next year, I appeal to you all to make Kerala free of Congress," Mr Shah said at the meeting.
The UPA government, he said, plundered Rs 10 lakh crore in the country in 76 scams. But the NDA government under Narendra Modi mobilised Rs 2 lakh crore by auctioning 20 of the 230 mines and Rs 1 lakh crore through spectrum auction.
"If you need your youth and your nurses to find jobs within Kerala itself, you need to vote for BJP," he added.
Earlier, while speaking to the media, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had reiterated that Congress would complete its five-year tenure.
"The political vendetta against us cannot succeed," he said. "None of the allegations against the government have been proved and there are no issues or differences within the party that cannot be solved mutually."