Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s efforts to bring a semblance of unity to the factionalism-riddled party unit of Kerala by appointing group-neutral senior leader VM Sudheeran as the State party chief — an act which irked established group managers like Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala — have failed miserably.
In fact, the internal wars in Kerala’s Congress have only worsened due to Sudheeran’s inability to even bring down the intensity of faction battles and the setback the party suffered in the lok Sabha polls. Moreover, the mistakes Sudheeran and others committed in the selection of candidates for the election have created a new batch of disgruntled elements in the party.
The past week saw two senior leaders — PC Chacko and PT Thomas — turning against the Kerala PCC leadership, Chandy and Chennithala giving a new dimension to the group wars. While Chacko blamed the leaders for his poll defeat in Chalakkudy, Thomas accused them of betrayal over the denial to him of the Idukki seat and for not giving him a party post.
Chacko, chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee set up during the UPA rule to probe the 2G Spectrum scam, told a newspaper that he was defeated in the lok Sabha polls in Chalakkudy, seen as a sure seat of the Congress and Chacko himself, because Chandy and Chennithala had stabbed him in the back.
Chacko later denied having said anything like this to the media, but the newspaper which published the report challenged him to disprove it claiming that it had audio-recording of his statement. The Congress leadership had during the seat-allocation process surrendered itself to his wish to shift from Thrissur, which he represented in the 15th lok Sabha, to Chalakkudy.
PT Thomas, who was denied ticket to contest the Idukki seat despite being an ardent supporter of Chandy in the group war of the Congress, alleged that the Chief Minister, Chennithala and other leaders were responsible for it. Incidentally, Dean Kuriakose, another Chandy-loyalist, who contested the Idukki seat for the Congress, met with defeat.
Thomas now claims that Sudheeran, who was entrusted with the job of establishing peace in the party, had betrayed him by not fulfilling his promise to accommodate him in a senior position in the party after the election as a compensation for denying a seat in the election. When the new list of appointments to top party positions came last week, Thomas’s name was not on it.
Observers say that Sudheeran has already failed as the PCC chief in fulfilling his mission to end factionalism. “In the process, Sudheeran himself has become a faction leader, though he doesn’t have many group followers. It seems that his efforts to end groupism have been reduced to some kind of antagonism towards the established group managers,” said a senior KPCC member.
That Sudheeran has not been able to even reduce the level of rivalry between Chandy and Chennithala was obvious from the diametrically opposite positions they took on the sensitive issue of trafficking children from states like Jharkhand and Bihar to orphanages run by Muslim Managements in Kerala without proper documents.
When Chennithala took a tough stand on the issue and the State police under him registered a case for human trafficking, Chandy and many others in the UDF Government, in which the Muslim league was a major partner, rushed to describe the incident as a case of lapses on the part of the orphanage managements.