In the scam-beleaguered Congress-led UDF Cabinet of Kerala, the man facing the highest number of charges — including those relating to corruption, nepotism and even sexual abuse — is Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. In spite of that, he is indisputably the man leading the party as well as the coalition in the crucial May 16 Assembly election.
When the battle for supremacy was raging a few weeks ago among the three top Congress leaders of the State - Chandy, PCC chief VM Sudheeran and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala, head of the ‘I’ group — the high command, convinced that it was losing its grip over the Chief Minister, had decided that the three of them together would lead the party in the polls.
This was seen as a clever move to clip Chandy’s wings at that time but he managed to beat it and succeeded in installing himself at the helm of the UDF’s electoral affairs. The current situation is such that even disputes arising at local levels in various constituencies do not get settled without his intervention, making Sudheeran and Chennithala insignificant to a large extent.
Even Congress leaders belonging to opposing camps now admit that the issue of who the Chief Minister will be in case the mandate is for continuance of UDF rule has been settled effectively. “There is no need even to have a discussion on this matter if the poll result is favourable to the UDF. It will be Chandy,” said a top leader belonging to Chennithala’s ‘I’ group.
Observers are of the opinion that Sudheeran and Chennithala are no matches to Chandy when it comes to the question of battling for survival. This was seen in several issues in the recent past itself including the one in which he was accused of taking bribe from a fraudster woman, Saritha S Nair of the solar scam, and abusing her sexually at his official residence, the Cliff House.
Sudheeran had entered into an open battle against Chandy over the issue of selecting candidates by insisting that those facing charges of graft and immorality — all belonging to the two groups led by Chandy and Chennithala — should not be included in the list with the obvious intention of weakening the supremacy of factions by keeping their staunchest loyalists out of the race.
Chennithala perhaps was aware of his infirmities and chose not to fight but Chandy fought back fiercely. The result was that some of the Ministers facing serious charges of corruption had to be fielded while Sudheeran was forced to be satisfied with the achievement of getting just one Chandy-loyalist, Benny Behennan MlA, dropped from the list.
“Sudheeran’s mistake was that he had gone into war with Chandy without proper weapons and without doing his homework properly,” said senior journalist Rajiv S. “He must have remembered that he was fighting the man who had dethroned late K Karunakaran, the former chief minister known once as the Chanakya of Kerala politics, in the name of a reportedly non-existent case, the ISRO spy scandal,” he said.
Reports coming in from various parts of Kerala indicate that UDF candidates are working hard to get Chandy for campaigning for them at least for some hours. Even known loyalists of Chennithala and Sudheeran are in the list of those who are waiting for Chandy to arrive in their constituencies, it is said.
Chandy’s biggest advantage, according to observers, is that he has succeeded in projecting himself as Kerala’s most pro-development leader even when taking care to keep his image of being the most people-friendly politician. “We may have disputes over his sincerity but he is the only Congress leader who has got that image,” says another journalist.