Rampant faction war in the State unit has made the situation in Kerala extremely adverse for the Congress party, especially in the context of the coming lok Sabha polls, according to the assessment of Mukul Wasnik, AICC general secretary in-charge of Kerala affairs, who had done an on-the-scene study of the matter last week.
According to the sources in Delhi and Indira Bhavan, the Congress’ Kerala headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram, Wasnik will inform party vice-president Rahul Gandhi through a detailed report that the Congress could suffer considerable losses in the lok Sabha election. A recent survey had predicted the Congress’ seats in Kerala to shrink from the present 13 to just 4.
Wasnik’s report, which does not analyze in detail the anti-incumbency factor confronting the Congress evolving from the charges of corruption and mis-governance against the UDF Government, has concentrated on how groupism is set to undermine the prospects of the Party in the coming lok Sabha election.
The biggest drawback Wasnik had noticed in Kerala in his direct observations during the October 17-18 visit to the State was the lack of coordination between the party leadership and the Congress-led Government. The party and the Government are going on diametrically opposite directions, according to him.
Wasnik had learned during his visit that the rampant group wars in the party, mainly the one between the factions led by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and State party president Ramesh Chennithala, had permeated into district levels and even further to the lower strata of the organisation. This would seriously hit the election preparations, he has assessed.
The AICC general
secretary who had participated in a meeting of the committee for coordination between the Congress and the Government in Thiruvananthapuram will tell Rahul Gandhi and party chief Sonia Gandhi that the situation in Kerala is so pathetic that the Government and the party (read Chandy and Chennithala) are unable to take each other into confidence.
The Wasnik report also says that information on the decisions of the Congress-led Government is not being properly conveyed to the party leadership. Also, the party has failed in popularising the pro-people schemes of the Government.
At the height of their standoff some months back, Chennithala had told a newspaper that the Chief Minister that both of the leaders could go to their own respective ways.
Senior leaders like Thennala Balakrishna Pillai and CV Padmarajan, known as soft-spoken Congress functionaries, had raised serious allegations during the meeting of the Government-partycoordination committee in which Wasnik had taken part. Apart from this meeting, he had also participated in party workers’ conventions in four southern districts.
Wasnik would also tell his bosses that even senior Congress leaders in Kerala are not obeying the high command’s instructions to abstain from making controversial statements in public which were causing huge damages to the party. His report underlines the need for establishing truce between the opposing groups in Kerala at the earliest.
Despite Wasnik’s assessments, State Congress vice-president MM Hassan, known as a fierce warrior of the ‘A’ group of Chief Minister Chandy, said in Kannur on Tuesday that there was no group war in Kerala’s party unit though there were groups in it. He also said that the high command was in the process of solving the problems in the Kerala party.
Meanwhile, the tiny but powerful fourth group, led by Union Minister Vayalar Ravi, has been holding secret meetings in a bid to sabotage the alleged efforts of Chandy’s ‘A’ group and Chennithala’s ‘I’ group to share between them all the positions in the district committees in the context of the imminent reorganisation of these bodies.
Sources said that during the secret meetings at Kochi and Kozhikode held on Saturday and Sunday, his loyalists had presented before Ravi their complaints on how the two prominent groups were trying to share the positions between them.
The Minister reportedly consoled them by saying that he would approach the high command if ‘injustice’ was done to the group.