New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Suresh Gopi’s supporters have been accused of misrepresenting a Thrissur church vicar’s speech to make it appear as if the priest was appealing for votes in the politician’s favour, the Telegraph reported.
Father Paul Thekkanath, vicar of the church part of the Prajyoti Niketan College in Thrissur’s Puthukkad, has filed a complaint against BJP workers in the local police station for using a section of his speech, without context, for campaigning.
Thekkanath had delivered the speech on December 2, 2023 while Gopi was visiting the institution for an outreach programme. In the section used by BJP, the priest can be heard saying: “Only when we run together can we achieve victory. So, if we run along with Suresh Gopi sir we can achieve that.”
According to the Telegraph, the party workers have been sharing the video clip on social media to make it look like the vicar was appealing to Christians to vote for Gopi.
Gopi had gone to the college to hold “SG Coffee Times” as part of the BJP’s outreach to the Christian community in the area. The vicar had said those lines during a long conversation with Gopi in a different context, the paper reported.
More than 40% of voters in Thrissur come from a minority community with Christians accounting for more than half of them, the report said.
On Thursday (April 25), Gopi met with several religious leaders “to seek blessings” ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, however, he insisted that the visits were purely personal and ‘not politically motivated’.
Gopi visited the St. George Forane Church in Aruvithura near Pala before meeting with Mar Joseph Kallarangatt, the bishop of the Pala diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church, at the bishop’s residence.
The actor-turned-politician also visited Kanjirappally bishop Mar Jose Pulickal as well as G. Nair Service Society general secretary Sukumaran Nair, among others.
