A day after a senior Congress leader from Kerala likened party vice-president Rahul Gandhi as a ‘joker’ and said his ‘mad’ working style had led the party and the UPA to their worst poll debacle, Rahul as well as the entire national leadership of the party came under heavy fire at a meeting of the Kerala PCC executive committee on Thursday.
While many who spoke at the meeting held Rahul — though without naming him — directly responsible for the humiliating defeat, some others said it was the anti-people policies and under-performance of the second UPA Government which had led the party into it. The meeting was for analysing the poll performance of the party in the 20 seats in Kerala.
In the forefront of the attack against the central Congress leadership at the PCC executive meeting were former MP and the defeated party candidate in Kannur, K Sudhakaran, T Siddique, the Congress candidate who lost the election in Kasaragod, and KC Abu, the district Congress president in Kozhikode.
Sudhakaran, known for his defiantly open style of speech in the party and outside, said that Rahul simply did not have the qualities of leadership necessarily required. “It is high time Congress workers and leaders possessed the courage to say that the emperor is naked,” sources quoted Sudhakaran as saying at the meeting.
Attacking Rahul further, Sudhakaran said qualities of youth should not be seen only in appearance of the person and his words but those factors should also reflect in one’s activities and positions. He said it was indeed the inefficiency and lack of direction of the leadership that had led to the party’s humiliating defeat in the 16th lok Sabha elections.
Stating that the national leadership had failed in correctly assessing the political reality, KC Abu said that Rahul was not a leader who could take on Narendra Modi. According to Siddique, the party could meet with its own burial if things progressed in the current manner. He said the party workers were being forced to bear the consequences of the wrong actions.
likening Rahul to a joker, senior Congress leader and former Minister TH Musthaffa had the other day demanded his resignation as party vice-president. He had also said that even leaders like AK Antony were members of a coterie around Rahul, whose only job was to praise him for whatever he did.
State Home Minister and former State Congress chief Ramesh Chennithala said at the meeting the main reason behind the party’s debacle was the inefficiency of the second UPA Government. He said many of the measures adopted by the second UPA regimes were “indigestible”.
This was not the first time Chennithala had been blaming the economic policies of the Manmohan Government. He had a few days back said that the party could not expect people to vote for it after taking steps like hiking the prices of petrol and diesel frequently.
Analysing of the poll results, CM Oommen Chandy observed that there had been a huge erosion of votes in the traditional strongholds of the party in the lok Sabha election, adding that this vote-erosion had resulted in the party’s defeat in certain seats. The Congress had won eight of the total 20 seats in the State, while its allies bagged four.
Chandy suggested that the reasons for the vote-erosion in party strongholds should be thoroughly examined. Agreeing with the Chief Minister on this matter, State Congress president VM Sudheeran said that the defeat of party candidates in certain constituencies was totally unexpected. He said this would be examined.