Thiruvananthapuram, Feb. 10 -- Sahitya Akademi president and fellow Left traveller K Satchidanandan ruffled feathers within the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) by stating that continuous rule by a party/alliance does not augur well for a healthy democracy.

The comments by the prominent Malayalam poet come in the run up to the Assembly elections in Kerala, where the government headed by Pinarayi Vijayan is aiming for a third consecutive term.

"For a democracy to function well, the government and the opposition must change regularly. Bengal's experience is before us," Satchidanandan told reporters, a day after he dwelt on the same subjects in an interview to a local newspaper. He indicated that the current state of the West Bengal CPI(...