BJP Alleges Suresh Gopi Excluded from Kerala Highway Review Meeting

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Thrissur district unit has protested the failure of authorities to inform Union Minister and Thrissur MP Suresh Gopi about a review meeting on National Highway development projects in the district. The meeting, held at the collectorate, assessed progress on key infrastructure including the Amballur underpass and the Puthukkad flyover on NH 544.

In a statement, BJP district president Justin Jacob said that Mr. Gopi, who represents the Thrissur constituency in Parliament, was not notified or invited to the meeting despite discussions involving highway projects within his constituency. The meeting was attended by Kerala Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports O.J. Janeesh, District Collector Shikha Surendran, and local legislators, Jacob noted.

Describing the omission as “against democratic conventions,” Jacob alleged that the state government was “mixing politics with development issues” and “sidelining the people’s representative.” He suggested that the exclusion was deliberate and aimed at gaining political mileage. The statement did not provide evidence of intentional exclusion.

Suresh Gopi, a Rajya Sabha MP and Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, is the first BJP MP from Kerala in decades. The National Highway projects in Thrissur fall under the jurisdiction of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the state’s Public Works Department.

Neither the District Collector nor the Minister’s office has commented on the allegations as of this report. The BJP’s protest comes amid ongoing political tensions between the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala and the BJP-led central government over infrastructure funding and project implementation.