Internal bickerings in Congress resurface during membership drive

Even as the ongoing Congress membership drive is drawing to a close on February 14, the fissures among the leaders has delayed the nomination of the new president to both city and rural wings.

An attempt made by the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president G Parameshwara to nominate acting president to monitor the ongoing drive also met with a stiff resistance, forcing the higher ups to wait till the membership drive is completed.

Sources in the Mysore District (City) Congress Committee told Deccan Herald, a week ago, Parameshwara had issued an order nominating the party spokesperson in the City unit M Lakshmana as the president.

This was a result of hectic parleys between the former Mysuru and Kodagu MP A H Vishwanath and Parameshwara during the latter’s visit to Mysuru a fortnight ago. Vishwanath had spoken in favour of Lakshmana, eventually succeeding in convincing Parameshwara.

Also, the party wanted to replace the sitting president C Dasegowda who was finding it difficult to discharge duties, after his nomination to Command Area Development Authority (CADA) as its chairman. Similarly, MLC R Dharmasena who is also the president of Mysuru district rural Congress had offered to step down, owing to the mounting burden.

Though Parameshwara offered Annu Bhai, the incumbent Vice-president of City wing, to take over the reins as a stop gap arrangement complying with the party constitution, he turned down the offer, for the reasons best known to him.

Soon after going to Bengaluru, Parameshwara summoned Lakshmana and also handed over the letter of nomination to the Mysuru district unit. This led to severe heart burns in no time, with a delegation of senior leaders led by Karnataka Exhibition Authority (KEA) Chairman R Murthy expressing their resentment against favouring Lakshmana, a new entrant to the party.

Murthy told this paper that during the recent meeting of the chairpersons of various boards and corporations presided over by the party in-charge in Karnataka Digvijay Singh in Bengaluru, he had apprised the latter about the issue, where a newcomer had been nominated to head the party without consulting neither the Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, nor V Srinivas Prasad, Revenue and district in-charge minister.

Apart from Murthy, Chamaraja MLA Vasu too had written to Parameshwara expressing his reservations about the same issue. 

Taking all these into cognisance, Parameshwara withdrew the order nominating Lakshmana as the in-charge president. Parameshwara also stopped considering names for the rural unit. 

Meanwhile, the names of former Youth Congress district unit president R Raghu, spokesperson S Ravishankar, advocate Pradeep is doing rounds, emerging as the probables to head the City unit.