No hanky-panky and not a farcial exercise this time

The much-awaited reconstitution of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee [KPCC], this time around, will not be the farcical exercise it had been reduced to over the years.

That much is clear from the tough stand a number of senior leaders of the party have taken on the sensitive issue. Among the leaders who have demanded a genuine and broad-based revamp of the KPCC are Union Minister Vayalar Ravi, senior leader V M Sudheeran and MLA K Muraleedharan.

It was Ravi who fired the first salvo in this connection. Ravi has made it clear that the KPCC reconstitution should not be reduced to a sharing of the posts between the two dominant factions in the party represented by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala.
To ensure that there is no hanky-panky this time, leaders owing allegiance to Ravi had a meeting with both Chandy and Chennithala and demanded at least one District Congress Committee post and a KPCC general secretary post for their  candidate.

Senior leader V M Sudheeran, who has become an increasingly vocal critic of the Congress-led UDF government’s performance of late, has also warned both Chandy and Chennithala against making the KPCC rejig a ‘package deal’ between the two. Sudheeran said the basis on which the candidates for the state assembly elections were selected by the duo won’t do this time around.

Not to be left behind, K Muraleedharan, son of late K Karunakaran, has also supported the demand of Ravi and Sudheeran for genuine and representative reconstitution of the KPCC. Refusal to do so and ignoring the wishes and aspirations of candidates who do not belong to any particular group will bode ill for the party, he cautioned. In the light of the firm stand taken by these senior leaders, Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala will have to exercise utmost care to ensure that the KPCC reconstitution addresses the aspirations of a larger shade of opinion in the party.

It may be mentioned that the manner in which Chandy and Chennithala packed the candidates list for the assembly elections with their own loyalists had drawn strong criticism from within the party. A committee headed by former KPCC chief Thennala Balakrishna Pillai had blamed Chandy and Chennithala for the wrong selection of candidates made by Chandy and Ramesh for the unsatisfactory performance of the Congress in the state assembly elections.

The reconstitution of the KPCC, which has already been delayed a number of times, is expected to be completed by August end. [IPA]