War worsens in Kerala’s Congress

The crisis in Kerala’s groupism-riddled Congress party deepened on Tuesday with the ongoing war over the gifting of its Rajya Sabha seat to ‘inconsistent’ ally Kerala Congress(M) allegedly arbitrarily by the top leadership worsening and three leadership meetings on two days failing to establish even a semblance of order in the party.

Within minutes of the top leadership deciding to ban criticisms in public by functionaries, especially through social media, former State Congress president VM Sudheeran unbundled before newsmen in Thiruvanan-thapuram his charges against the group bosses and their managers in the party. “I am a victim of the enmity of the group managers,” he said.

Sudheeran’s responses came as he came out of a meeting of the PCC executive which ended in chaos after the so-called managers of the ‘A’ group led by former chief minister Oommen Chandy tried to disrupt his speech.

War of words dominated a leadership meeting earlier in the day and a session of the political affairs committee on Monday.

Trouble had erupted in the State Congress last Friday over the decision taken ‘arbitrarily’ by the party’s leadership ‘trinity’ comprising Chandy, Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala, head of the ‘I’ group, and acting PCC chief MM Hassan, a staunch loyalist of Chandy, to gift the party’s RS seat to the KC(M), which had quit the Congress-led UDF in 2016 for unexplained reasons.

While group-neutral leaders like Sudheeran suspected a conspiracy behind this decision and some young Congress MLAs demanded leadership, the ‘trinity’ justified the decision by saying this was a sacrifice the party was forced to make in order to strengthen the UDF in the context of the coming general election but the explanation could not convince many.

Chandy stayed away from the meetings allegedly because he did not want to face criticisms but Chennithala admitted after the meetings on Monday and Tuesday that there was a lapse in the way in which the decision was taken without discussing the matter in party forums. He assured that decisions on crucial matters would be taken only after discussions henceforth.

According to a top Congress source, “Sudheeran literally exploded at the meeting when he unleashed an attack against the group bosses and their managers.”