When senior leader VM Sudheeran was appointed as president of Kerala’s Congress party last February, his mission was to forge unity in the organisation by ending its rampant group wars. Seven months later, he has not only failed in that mission but has become the common enemy of the warring factions.
How the level of respect most party leaders used to give him in the past has come down in the changed context was obvious from the scathing criticisms he had to face in the meetings of the PCC
office-bearers and executive committee on Wednesday and Thursday and the State committee meeting of the Youth Congress on Friday.The KPCC office-bearers’ meet on Wednesday saw comparatively young leaders unleashing criticisms against Sudheeran. One young MlA even went to the extent of describing him as a person who thought he alone was right and saying that the coordination between the party and the UDF Government it was leading had collapsed under his leadership.
The warring ‘A’ and ‘I’ groups led respectively by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala are now blaming Sudheeran for all the problems associated with the new liquor policy of the UDF Government which envisaged total booze ban in ten years.
According to observers, Chandy would not have gone for total liquor ban if Sudheeran had not insisted on not reopening the 418 bars closed for lack of required facilities.Group managers in the Congress are alleging that Sudheeran, with his stand, had effectively projected the Chief Minister as an agent of the liquor mafia.
“The bar war between Chandy and Sudheeran fast transformed into a power struggle in the Congress party. Chandy had to somehow end the general perception that he stood for the liquor mafia and Sudheeran was the anti-liquor messiah. So he found a tough but clever path, and announced total liquor ban,” said a senior editor of a pro-Congress newspaper.
Observers point out that Sudheeran was not ready to give up his fight even after Chandy won the first round by announcing total liquor ban in ten years. While the Chief Minister and his Excise Minister K Babu were saying that the UDF was yet to take a decision on whether to give licences for new wine and beer parlours, Sudheeran said the front had already decided not to do that.
A senior ‘A’ group leader said that there were occasions when Sudheeran indirectly accused the Chief Minister of instructing the Advocate General to be soft in the arguments against the bar owners when the issue appeared in the court. “Instead of defending the party and the Government, he was more eager to project himself as the only righteous leader,” he said.
Group managers in the Congress are now equating Sudheeran to nonagenarian CPI(M) leader VS Achuthanandan who has been waging a war against the official leadership of his party for over the past one decade. “That position of VS had done a lot of damage to the CPI(M). Similarly, Sudheeran’s stands are affecting the Congress’ unity and strength,” the ‘A’ group leader alleged.
According to sources, the KPCC executive meet the other day saw a senior Congress leader accusing Sudheeran of nurturing a new group in the party, the group of the group-less. “It is all very well for the party to pretend that there are no problems between the Chief Minister and Sudheeran. But everybody knows everything,” said the group leader.