THIRUVANATHAPURAM: The indefinite fast by BJP leader C K Padmanabhan demanding the withdrawal of prohibitory orders at Sabarimala entered the sixth day here on Saturday.Addressing party workers at the protest venue, BJP former state president and national executive member P K Krishnadas said the attitude of chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan t towards democratic protests was worse than that of the British during the colonial rule.Krishnadas said the state government was trying to divide government employees along religious lines by launching the Women’s Wall programme.He demanded that the state government, especially devaswom minister Kadakampally Surendran, should stop making disrespectful statements on Ayyappa devotee Venugopalan Nair who set himself ablaze in front of secretariat. “Kadakampally said Venugopal was mentally unsound. On what basis is he making such claims? People think the government intervened in the recording of the dying declaration of Venugopalan Nair,” he said.Krishnadas said Venugopalan Nair was not the first Ayyappa devotee who killed himself over the current state of affairs in Sabarimala. “Ramakrishna Guruswamy of Koyilandy was the first to commit suicide over the Sabarimala issue. He said it clearly in his death note. He too, like Venugopalan Nair was a Left sympathiser. Pinarayi Vijayan and Kadakampally Surendran should understand this,” he said.Padmanabhan started the fast when BJP state general secretary A N Radhakrishnan was taken to hospital seven days after he started the indefinite hunger strike in front of the secretariat.According to BJP sources, Padmanabhan is likely to be shifted to a hospital in a day or two and if that is the case, BJP state general secretary Sobha Surendran may go on a fast.

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