• Thursday, March 28, 2024

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In India’s Kerala, communist union leader faces flak after buying pricey Mini Cooper

Anil Kumar defended buying the car saying his wife, an employee at the Indian Oil Corporation, a public sector undertaking, bought the car.

Representational Image (iStock)

By: Shubham Ghosh

A communist trade union leader in the southern Indian state of Kerala has stormed the headlines after purchasing a Mini Cooper car worth Rs 50 lakh (£48,999), India Today reported. Kerala is India’s only communist-ruled state.

The leader, PK Anil Kumar, is the state secretary of the petroleum and gas workers’ union, the report added.

However, communist leaders’ dealings with Mini Cooper is not new.

In 2017, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, a late leader of the state’s ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist), had triggered a controversy by campaigning in a red Mini Cooper car that belonged to a person accused in a gold-smuggling case, the report added.

A senior journalist, who mocked Anil Kumar by saying that latter, through buying an expensive car, wanted to study how capitalists live, also recalled Balakrishnan saying he had also done something same.

Another person asked in a Facebook post why all comrades love Mini Cooper.

Anil Kumar defended buying the car saying his wife, an employee at the Indian Oil Corporation, a public sector undertaking, bought the car.

The trade is not new controversies either. According to the India Today report, he also has a case against him for insulting and threatening a woman entrepreneur over her caste.

Representatives from his union told local media that they were yet to receive any complaint on the matter but assured to look into it.

A few months ago, a communist leader in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal named Shatarup Ghosh also faced a similar accusation from the opponents after buying a car for Rs 22 lakh (£21,559). He later said that his father helped him to buy the car.

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