Congress begins Kerala leadership revamp talks

A section of the party demanded that a Ramesh Chennithala should be replaced as leader of opposition

Talks on leadership revamp in the Congress in Kerala have begun with parliamentary party meeting on Tuesday.

According to sources, though a section of the party demanded that a new person should be made the leader of opposition instead of Ramesh Chennithala, another section backed him.

There were reports that MLAs owing allegiance to veteran leader Oommen Chandy were also favouring Chennithala to continue as opposition leader. Instead, a demand for replacing Mullappally Ramachandran from Kerala PCC president post with a loyalist of Oommen Chandy may come up. But many young MLAs in the Congress were strongly resisting these moves, alleging groupism in the party.

A strong demand for making Congress leader V D Satheesan the leader of opposition was also coming up.

Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and V Vaithilingam, who were deputed by the high command, was learnt to have collected opinion of each elected member and a decision on the leader of opposition would be taken soon.