Kerala: Grouping rearing its ugly head in Congress

Groupism is rearing its ugly head again in the Congress in Kerala as a section of senior leaders held a meeting in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday close on the heels of expressing differences with the leadership.

While selection of block committee presidents of the party had triggered the differences, it aggravated further with the alleged feeble response of the party leadership towards the the allegations against the judicial commission that put former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and many party leaders in the dock.

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Leaders of the 'A' and 'I" groups of the Congress took part in the meeting which was learnt to have decided to strongly take up their grievances against the current party leadership, especially opposition leader V D Satheesan, with the party high command. Former Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala, United Democratic Front convenor M M Hassan, Lok Sabha MPs Benny Behnnan and M K Raghavan former minister K C Joseph were among those attended the meeting, said sources.

Kerala PCC president K Sudhakaran said that the Congress had earlier sorted out much serious issues within the party. Hence even if any party leaders have any grivances the party was confident of sorting out those amicably.

Sudhakaran was also learnt to have held discussions with Satheesan in the evening.

The major grievance of the dissident leaders was that there was no proper consultation with the senior leaders before finalising the block presidents recently. Even as a committee was formed to recommend block presidents, the recommendations of the committee was overlooked without proper consultations. Many senior leaders had already expressed their resentment on the matter openly.

The loyalists of former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had openly expressed their displeasure over the party leadership for not taking up the allegations against the credentials of the Justice G Sivarajan commission. The commission's observations and remarks during its sittings during the term of Chandy government was considered to be a reason for the defeat of the Congress in the 2016 Assembly elections. A former CPI minister and and a former IPS officer had raised serious allegations against the commission's credentials.