The alleged cold war between Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and State Congress president VM Sudheeran and lack of coordination between the Government and the ruling party are affecting the administration in Kerala with several official initiatives becoming victims of indecision and getting delayed indefinitely.
Even Congress leaders are now admitting that there is virtually no coordination between the party and the Government and both Sudheeran and Chandy are to be blamed for this. The Chief Minister and the PCC chief are holding diametrically opposite views on almost every Government plan but there is no effort to end these differences, they say.
The main reason for the standoff is Sudheeran’s opposition to Chandy’s plan for a Cabinet reshuffle, which he had declared even before the lok Sabha election, and for allowing reopening of some of the 418 bars closed on April 1 in the name of lack of facilities. What has worsened the situation is the high command’s inability to intervene due to its own serious preoccupations.
Chandy and Sudheeran hold divergent views on almost every issue that concerns State administration, be it the allotment of higher secondary status and Plus II course batches to hundreds of schools, the legal tangle over the operation of stone quarries, the Aranmula international airport project or encroachment of public lands in Munnar.
“Basically, it is a matter of ideological differences,” said a senior Congress leader. “While the PCC president seems to be adopting an idealistic position on all issues concerning the State, the Chief Minister is harping on the point of practicality, generating suspicions of personal interests. Anyway, the situation should not be allowed to continue,” he said.
According to critics, Chandy, leader of the ‘A’ group in the State Congress, wants to reshuffle his Cabinet mainly in order to end the upper hand of his rival ‘I’ group led by Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala in the Government. Though Chandy is the Chief Minister, most of the key portfolios are currently held by Ministers from the ‘I’ group.
Sudheeran is against this idea - though he would openly say that Cabinet reshuffle is the prerogative of the Chief Minister - mainly because of his objections to the rampant groupism in the party. The mission given to him by party president Sonia Gandhi while appointing him as PCC chief in February was to end the rampant groupism in State Congress.
Chandy, according to sources, think that the high command is not supporting him on the issue of Cabinet reshuffle even when it is his prerogative mainly because of Sudheeran’s objections.
The ‘I’ group has also been exerting pressure on the high command saying that a reshuffle at this juncture might affect the unity of the ruling UDF coalition.
A worse bone of contention is the issue of reopening of the 418 bars closed for lack of facilities. Sudheeran wants all these bars to remain closed forever but Chandy favours opening of a good number of them because of alleged pressures from “outside”. However, he is unable to openly fight for his wish because of the increasing support for Sudheeran’s stand in the society.
When a division bench of the Kerala High Court on July 25 pronounced a verdict - which seemed to be favouring land-grabbers - terming as illegal the takeover by Government of grabbed lands in Munnar, Chandy had tried to defend the bench but Sudheeran had stood with the Opposition saying that such verdicts would send wrong messages to the people.