Union minister Kiren Rijiju on Monday accused Kerala’s Communist Party of India (Marxist) of harbouring “anti-national sentiments”, PTI reported. Rijiju said that the kind of political violence that the Left has allegedly indulged in “could not be tolerated” in a democracy.

“This is time for action. We will not let forces against our country survive for long,” Rijiju said at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Jan Raksha Yatra in Delhi. “The CPI(M) has anti-national thoughts. We are BJP workers, and have survived difficult conditions.”

He said that the Left was intimidating people through such killings, but added that the BJP does not fear such tactics. “The only answer to political killings in Kerala carried out by the Left is to make people aware.” The Union minister of state for home said that had the Congress been in power at the Centre, President’s Rule would have been imposed in Kerala. He claimed that the BJP was instead fighting the Left through “democratic means”.

After the event, BJP workers carried out a “shav yatra” (symbolic funeral procession) from Delhi’s Mahadev Road to the CPI(M) office at Bhai Vir Singh Marg. The police reportedly fired water cannons to disperse the workers.