Pinarayi Vijayan is curiously “untouched” by central agencies. Rahul Gandhi’s grandmother had jailed leaders during the Emergency when she “suppressed the entire country”.

During a general election, you don’t expect allies to be saying these things about each other, but that’s precisely what’s happening between Gandhi and Vijayan in the run-up to voting in Kerala. 

When Another Election Show hit Kochi’s Maharajas College, this thorny discourse repeated itself. 

We sat down with students of the CPIM-aligned Students’ Federation of India and the Congress-aligned Kerala Students Union who agreed that the main goal is to keep the BJP out. Where they didn’t agree was on whether the CPIM or Congress was better-equipped to lead the charge.

We also discussed their reactions to The Kerala Story, what it’s like for two allies to be at each other’s throats, and why the BJP is, at the end of the day, their enemy number one. 

Watch.

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