The relation between the Janata Dal (United) and the Congress, leader of Kerala’s ruling UDF in which the former is a minor partner, is turning sour steadily as a majority in the State JD(U) feels that the front leader had betrayed it in the recent civic poll.
Demand has strengthened within the JD(U) for breaking the alliance with the UDF in the context of the alleged betrayal in the local bodies poll by the Congress. Many JD(U) leaders feel that Congressmen had worked to ensure the defeat of JD(U) candidates in several wards. JD(U) sources said such a demand had been put forward by several senior party leaders.
“There is a feeling in the party that we were not given seats in wards where we have strong base. There are complaints within the party that even in wards allocated to us, friends in the Congress had selectively worked against our candidates,” JD(U)’s State secretary general Varghese George said in Kozhikode just before the start of a State committee meeting on Tuesday.
However, State JD(U) president MP Veerendra Kumar, who admitted after the State committee meeting that lack of unity in the UDF had caused problems for the party in the local polls, did not give a clear answer to newsmen’s questions on whether there was a move to break the alliance with the UDF.
Asked if the JD(U) was facing the need of leaving the front, Veerendra Kumar said, “We are a partner in the UDF currently. Isn’t that a clear-enough answerIJ” Kumar admitted that the party did not get the votes it had expected in the local bodies election. “It’s a fact that there was no unity in several places. We will raise the issue in the UDF,” Kumar added.
Even as Veerendra Kumar admitted that the party had suffered losses in the local polls though he did not have the exact figures, another senior JD(U) leader, sheikh P Harris said that Congress had indulged in leg-pulling against his party’s candidates in the local bodies election. “But an election defeat does not warrant a walkout from the front,” he added.
JD(U) leaders said the party had faced a repeat of the “Palakkad experience” in the local polls. When Kumar, candidate of the UDF, was defeated in the Palakkad constituency in the 2014 lok Sabha polls, the JD(U) had complained that this happened because of non-cooperation from the Congress. A UDF committee had reportedly endorsed this view after fact-finding exercises.
However, a section of “realists” (as a party leader put it) is of the view that it would be suicidal for the party to part ways with the UDF at this juncture especially as the merger talks with the Janata Dal (S) – a partner of the CPI(M)-led Opposition lDF – in the State are not showing any positive signs.
The JD(U) of Kerala, which till last December was known as Socialist Janata (Democratic), was part of the JD(S) and therefore a partner of the lDF till 2009.