Equations are changing and some kind of polarisation is taking place in Kerala’s Congress party, which is yet to make a sincere effort to find out the exact reasons for its devastation in the May 16 Assembly election, with several managers of the two major groups controlling the party beginning to lose faith in their bosses due to their alleged inability and lack of resolve to take on “common enemy” VM Sudheeran, State Congress president.
If leaders of the ‘A’ and ‘I’ groups in the State Congress which have so far been controlling the party are to be believed, a strange kind of polarisation is taking place within the Congress with leaders who have so far been staunch loyalists of the two faction bosses showing willingness to declare allegiance to Sudheeran, whose mission is to end factional activities.
The immediate reason for the loss of faith of groups managers in their bosses, former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy heading the ‘A’ group and former Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala leading the ‘I’ group, is that both of them adopted total silence when the issue was to be discussed with the high command in Delhi during a meeting last Saturday.
The ‘A’ and ‘I’ groups, which have been battling against each other all these years, had recently joined hands in order to get Sudheeran, trusted very much by the high command, removed as Kerala PCC president by somehow establishing that he was solely responsible for the drubbing the Congress and the UDF it leads had suffered in the Assembly polls.
The understanding between the two factions was said to be that Chandy should become the KPCC chief once they succeeded in removing Sudheeran as Chennithala has already been elected as the Opposition leader in the State Assembly. It was in accordance with this plan that Chandy had refused to take up the post of the chairman of the UDF despite immense pressure.
“There is enough evidence now to believe that this was the ultimate objective of the concerted attacks unleashed against Sudheeran at the KPCC executive camp by the trusted loyalists of Chandy and Chennithala. That was just the first step in the strategy to remove Sudheeran as PCC chief,” said a group-neutral Congress leader.
According to sources in the Congress, the plan was to escalate this campaign against Sudheeran after the executive camp but the stand of the high command was not conducive to it. “It was in this context (that the group managers) had intensified their attacks against Sudheeran forcing Rahul Gandhi to call all the three leaders to Delhi for discussions,” said the leader.
Those in the forefront of the attacks against Sudheeran were PCC vice-president MM Hassan, a trusted lieutenant of Chandy, and ‘I’ group’s former MlA Joseph Vazhakkan and former MP K Sudhakaran, both PCC general secretaries. Their mission was to build a base for how Chandy and Chennithala should argue their case against Sudhakaran before Rahul Gandhi.
But the strategy collapsed when Chandy and Chennithala sat like “extremely studious boys” in front of Rahul without even making a murmur about the demand for Sudheeran’s ouster. “Instead, they came back like decent gentlemen calling for total unity in the party,” said a junior manager of the ‘I’ group based in Kochi.
Murmurs of dissent have already started coming out of both the ‘A’ and ‘I’ groups over the faction bosses’ bid to put all the blame on Sudheeran for the poll defeat without sincerely examining its actual reasons and for the same reason most of the group managers on both the sides are unhappy about the whole development.
“Sudheeran had become KPCC chief just two-and-a-half years back and everybody knows that he was working almost in total isolation,” the ‘I’ group manager said. Demands have started coming up from both the groups to find out who — whether those who had led for 30 months or those who had been in charge for over a decade — were responsible for this, he added. Sources in the two camps now admit that Sudheeran has emerged stronger particularly because of the high command’s support. In this context, a polarisation is gaining strength in the ‘A’ and ‘I’ groups and many leaders are said to be preparing to switch camps and declare support for Sudheeran.