Taking a dig at CPM, the BJP leader said the incident had exposed the "real friends" of the ruling party.
A top Kerala CPM leader has blundered into a controversy, travelling in a flashy Mini Cooper through the streets of Koduvally in Kozhikode district for the ruling party's roadshow to expose the BJP government's "anti-people" policies.
But it wasn't the BJP that was running for cover.
The BJP alleged the open-top luxury car used by CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan for the Jan Jagratha Yatra belonged to a young businessman who faced a probe into a gold smuggling racket busted in 2013.
State BJP leader K Surendran demanded Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan order a probe into the leader's links with the accused in a smuggling case.
"What type of 'Jagratha Yatra' is being taken out by Balakrishnan by travelling in a car owned by a smuggling accused?" Ramesh Chennithal, the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly asked on Thursday.
Taking a dig at the CPM, he said the incident had exposed the "real friends" of the ruling party.
The yatra was meant to be a counter to the BJP's high-decibel Jan Suraksha Rally that saw the party deploy over two dozen national leaders, central ministers and chief ministers of other states to expose, what it had called, the murder politics of Kerala's ruling party.
Mr Balakrishnan, who has been skewered by rival parties, over the ride, said the vehicle was arranged by local office-bearers of the party and he did not investigate whose vehicle it was before he got in.
"Now that you are saying all this (about the car owner's antecedents), we will probe it," he told media persons.
Karat Faisal, the man at the centre of the controversy, told local television channels that he was innocent and not an accused in the smuggling case investigated by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence. The car involved in the smuggling case was found in his house but a friend had left it, he said.
He also added that a local CPM leader borrowed his car for the roadshow at the last minutes after the car, which Mr Balakrishnan was to use, broke down.