One of the first announcements VM Sudheeran had made after being appointed as Kerala's Congress president on February 10 was that sharing of seats in the lok Sabha election on the basis of factions in the party would not be allowed but the party's list of probable candidates for the 16th lok Sabha election shows that groupism is still the determining factor.
The list the Congress has drawn up does not show any major changes in the names for the seats it had won in the 2009 election except in one. According to Sudheeran, the State party will hand over the list of probable candidates to the AICC screening committee by Sunday. The Congress had won 13 of the total 20 seats in the State in 2009 Parliament election.
Only two names seem to be exceptions to the State Congress's unwritten group-is-everything rule as far as seat allocation is concerned and they are Union Ministers Shashi Tharoor and KV Thomas. Party leaders say that the group managers would not want even to express an opinion for or against them as the decision in their case comes "right from the top".
In the 17 seats the Congress is contesting for the ruling UDF it is leading in the State, Thiruvananthapuram where Tharoor may be fielded for a second time and Ernakulam where Thomas can be the candidate once again are the only two constituencies where the State party leadership has not proposed a second name.
This certainty is in total contradiction with the fact that even a very senior leader like Union Minister Mullappally Ramachandran is running the risk of losing ticket for his sitting seat, Vadakara, if the number of seats the party is contesting comes down to 16 as part of an arrangement with the Socialist Janata-Democratic, which has staked claim for that seat.
Asked why Sudheeran's bid to make candidate selection a group-neutral affair did not produce the desired result, a Congress leader said, "In our party, it is simply not possible. Sudheeran is a group-neutral leader but even he knows that Congress would become weak in Kerala the minute groupism ends."
According to this leader, the "group-is-everything" rule could now be broken only if Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi decides to intervene in a decisive manner as he had done in the case of a couple of seats in the 2011 Assembly election. He also said that the promise of giving tickets to more women might also prove to be hollow.
The only seat where the sitting MP is not being considered for candidature is Kollam, where N Peethambara Kurup had defeated his CPI(M) rival by a margin of nearly 18,000 votes in 2009. However, he fell from grace within the Congress as well as in the Kerala society after he faced charges of sexually harassing actress Shwetha Menon during a public function.
However, this norm does not seem to be applicable in the case of Union Minister KC Venugopal, MP from Alappuzha. Venugopal is still facing the allegation of "using" Saritha S Nair, the young con woman behind the infamous solar scam. The name of Women's Congress leader Shanimol Usman is also being considered for the Alappuzha seat.
Though the Congress has drawn up a list of probable candidates for the 17 seats it traditionally contests, a final picture will emerge only after talks with the Kerala Congress (M), a major UDF partner, which has asked for a seat in addition to the one it used to contest. The Congress leadership will hold discussions with KC(M) and SJ-D on Friday.