Kerala Assembly Elections 2026 | CM Pinarayi Vijayan hits back at Telangana CM Revanth Reddy, uses sharp words

On Tuesday, the verbal disagreement between Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and his Telangana counterpart A Revanth Reddy took a sharp turn.

Reacting to earlier remarks made by Reddy at a meet-the-press event, Vijayan said that a chief minister should maintain basic standards of conduct. He also questioned whether such dignity was being followed.

Vijayan said he would respond at the right time, without giving a detailed response.

In his reply to the media to a question posed, Vijayan used words that were seen as nearly derogatory in Malayalam to call Reddy, signalling his strong disapproval of the remarks made against him.

The dispute began after Reddy used the words "nee po mone Vijaya" while referring to the Kerala CM on April 1 during a UDF campaign roadshow in Thiruvananthapuram's Nemom constituency ahead of the Assembly polls.

Addressing party workers, he used the popular Malayalam film dialogue from Narasimham, starring actor Mohanlal.

Invoking the famous line "Nee po mone Dinesha", he modified the dialogue to target Vijayan, saying "Nee po mone Vijaya", drwaing loud cheers from the crowd.

Reddy also claimed that Vijayan's "time is over" and that his "expiry date has passed".

"Your time is over. Your expiry date is over. You don't have any time to continue. Now, the UDF's time has come," he had said during the campaign roadshow.

Responding to these allegations earlier, Vijayan had said that the Telangana CM was "misinformed" and accused him of "ridiculing" Kerala and its people while trying to hide the weaknesses of his own state.

In a later response, Reddy defended his remarks and said that many of the statistics cited by Vijayan were taken from the NITI Aayog SDG Index 2023–24, arguing that the data was already outdated.

Single-phase elections to the 140-seat Kerala Assembly will be held on April 9.

(with PTI inputs)