Kannur (Kerala), April 7 Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Tuesday responded to his Telangana counterpart Revanth Reddy as the verbal exchange between the two leaders intensified.
In response to earlier remarks made by Reddy at a press conference here, the veteran Marxist leader stated that a chief minister must maintain basic standards of conduct and questioned whether such respect was being observed.
Without providing a detailed response, the chief minister said that he would respond at the appropriate time.
In his response to a media query, Vijayan used words that were considered highly offensive in Malayalam to address Reddy, indicating his strong disapproval of the remarks made against him.
The controversy began when Reddy used the phrase "nee po mone Vijaya" while referring to Vijayan on April 1 during a UDF campaign roadshow in the Nemom constituency of Thiruvananthapuram ahead of the assembly elections.
Addressing party workers, he used the popular Malayalam film dialogue from 'Narasimham', starring Mohanlal.
Using the famous line "Nee po mone Dinesha", he adapted it to target Vijayan, saying "Nee po mone Vijaya", which drew loud cheers from the crowd.
Reddy went further, claiming 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 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of the statistics cited by Vijayan were taken from the NITI Aayog SDG Index 2023–24, arguing that the data was already outdated.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.