Thiruvananthapuram, March 20 (IANS) The Kerala unit of CPI(M) on Monday permitted its legislator A. Raja -- disqualified by the High Court for contesting Devikulam Assembly constituency reserved for Scheduled Caste despite not belonging to the community -- to challenge the verdict in the Supreme Court.

A decision to this effect was taken during a top leadership meeting at the state party headquarters who asked Raja to file the appeal on Tuesday itself.

Responding to the development, Leader of Opposition V.D.Satheesan said that the CPI(M) should first publicly apologise to the entire SC community for giving the seat to someone who is not from the community but became a member by producing fake documents.

"The issue was brought to the notice of the Returning Officer when the nomination papers were filed but he failed to take action. The CPI(M) is primarily responsible for this fraud and now appropriate criminal cases should be filed against their candidates for filing fake documents," said Satheesan.

The case against Raja was filed by D. Kumar, the Congress-led UDF candidate. Kumar lost to Raja by 7,848 votes in the April 2021 Kerala Assembly elections.

Kumar had alleged that Raja is from a converted Christian community and had submitted fake certificates to make himself eligible to contest for the Assembly seat which is reserved for Scheduled Castes.

Consequent to the verdict, Raja cannot take part in the ongoing Assembly session besides the strength of the ruling Left Democratic Front has come down from 99 to 98 seats in the 140-member Kerala Legislative Assembly.

While Raja said he will react after studying the verdict order, Kumar said he was very confident about the verdict as everything was against Raja and "is now happy that the truth has come out".

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