New Delhi: Two days after refusing a group of Congress MPs, the Lakshadweep administration has refused to grant Left MPs from Kerala a permit to enter the union territory, declaring there is “… every possibility of public gathering and such gathering may lead to Covid spread in the islands”.
Permission has also been denied on grounds that the MPs’ “… political activities will certainly disturb the calm and peaceful atmosphere in the islands and it will be against the interest of the general public… security of the union territory”.
MPs Elamaram Kareem, V Sivadasan, AM Arif, Binoy Viswam, Shreyams Kumar, K Somaprasad, Thomas Chazhikkadan and John Brittas had sought permission to visit Lakshadweep “to have a fact check on the impact of administrative actions and reforms under the present Administrator…”.
Last week the administration refused permission to three Congress MPs; it said, according to a police report, that the visit of MPs Hibi Eden, TN Prathpan, CR Rakesh Sharma might instigate violent agitations, which is part of planned effort to ruin the peace.
The Congress and Left MPs have sought permission to visit Lakshadweep, which has been seeing widespread unrest since a series of controversial orders by the new centrally-appointed administrator Praful Khoda Patel.
Over the last months, there have been protests online and in Lakshadweep against a series of orders by the administrator. Recently, the High Court had put some of his proposals on interim stay, hearing a series of appeals.
One of these was the controversial removal of chicken, beef, and other meat from school menu and closing down of dairy farms.
Besides the Congress, the CPM, DMK, and other parties, scores of members of the BJP in the island group, have protested against these measures.
The protests have echoed in Kerala too, where Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had demanded Mr Patel’s removal and the assembly passed a unanimous resolution demanding recalling of the administrator, revoking the controversial orders.