With top State leaders Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala engaged in a fierce battle for retaining/gaining supremacy in the party, middle-level leaders and grassroots workers of the Congress in Kerala are worried about the poll prospects of the party and the UDF it leads in the Assembly election due in May.
The standoff between Chandy, leader of the ‘A’ group in the party, and Chennithala, heading the ‘I’ faction, had started worsening a few days ago following reports that the latter had written a letter to the high command demanding leadership change in the Government in the context of alleged crumbling of the regime’s reputation due to charges of corruption and other factors.
As these reports triggered intense trouble in the party with the ‘A’ group rallying behind Chandy and top ‘I’ group leaders publicly justifying the contents of the alleged letter through Press statements and TV talk shows, Chennithala, the Kerala PCC and the party high command denied the existence of such a letter but the damage had already been done.
“Nobody will ever know the truth of the letter but we all know about the passion of our leaders for writing letters to the high command. It seems this is the only one way they know of trying to influence the central leadership. But such an exercise at this juncture, if it had been undertaken by anyone, is an act of political idiocy,” said a senior ‘A’ group leader.
A big section in the Congress’s Kerala unit believe that Chandy with his survival games - as one ‘I’ group leader said - and tendency of not consulting with the leadership on matters concerning the Government, has continuously neglected the rot of corruption creeping into his own Cabinet as proved by the scandals like the solar scam and bar bribery scam.
The ‘I’ group is arguing that the party and the UDF will have to face a severe setback in the Assembly poll - equal to or worse than the one they suffered in the recent civic election - if the Congress approaches the voters projecting Chandy as the chief ministerial candidate because there is a feeling that he is heading the most corrupt regime Kerala has ever seen.
“The Chief Minister himself is accused of having links with con women and helping fraudsters as seen in the solar scam. The senior-most member of the Cabinet (KM Mani) is forced to resign on bribery charge. A close confidante of the CM, Excise Minister K Babu, is accused of taking `10-crore bribe from bar owners. What more do you wantIJ” asked an aide of Chennithala.
The Chief Minister on Saturday hit back at Chennithala - indeed indirectly - by saying, “It is for the people to evaluate the performance (of the Government). It is improper for particular individuals to do that in their personal level.” He said he did not want to comment on reports on Chennithala’s letter as he had already denied having written anything like that.
However, most middle-level leaders and grassroots workers - despite their factional associations - are worried that the war at the top could affect the poll prospects of the party and the UDF especially in the context of the setback in the local bodies election, the astonishing growth of the BJP and the coming together of majority communities which could help that party in a big way.
A group-neutral leader in Thrissur said on Saturday that he would hold the PCC president, VM Sudheeran, responsible for the present sorry state of affairs in the party. He even went to the extent of saying that Sudheeran, appointed directly by Sonia Gandhi with the specific mission of ending the group war, was “perhaps trying to cash in on the Chandy-Chennithala war”.