Row over Kerala MLA talking roughly to student seeking assistance

He alleged that it could be a planned move to provoke him and that could be why the call was recorded

Actor-turned CPM MLA in Kerala, M Mukesh, landed himself in a row after he spoke roughly to a student who rang him up seeking assistance.

An audio conversation of the MLA with the Class 10 student has surfaced, in which Mukesh can be heard asking why the student was repeatedly calling him and disturbing him while he was in a meeting.

The student said he was calling from Palakkad, to which the Kollam district MLA said he should have called the MLA in Palakkad and added that the one who gave him his number should be beaten.

When the student said that he did not know who was the MLA of his region, Mukesh said that he would have beaten the student if he was in front of him.

With the conversation triggering a row and certain organisations petitioning the Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Mukesh came out with a clarification that he got irritated as he was in an online meeting over the mobile phone and the meeting got disconnected since the child had repeatedly called him.

He also alleged that it could be a planned move to provoke him and that could be why the call was recorded.

The CPM in Kerala had recently faced embarrassment over Kerala Women's Commission chairperson M C Josephine, who is a senior CPM leader, who spoke arrogantly to a woman facing domestic violence. Josephine had to resign after protests mounted against her.