Muraleedharan, Mullappally front-runners to head Congress in Kerala
Thiruvananthapuram, July 7: With the new chief of the Congress' Kerala unit set to be named soon, sources in the know of things say veteran leader K. Karunakaran's son K. Muraleedharan and senior leader Mullappally Ramachandran are among the front-runners.
"These two names (Muraleedharan and Ramachandran) have been zeroed in on and the announcement could well be made very soon.
"Today a practice that has met with some success is the appointment of a President and a Working President in states. May be these two leaders could well be nominated for these two posts," a senior party leader who did not want to be identified told IANS on Saturday.
After V.M. Sudheeran quit as President in a jiffy last year, M.M. Hassan was first asked to officiate and then was given the post till the party high command zeroed in on a suitable candidate.
The Congress' Kerala unit was for several decades deeply divided between Karunakaran and former Defence Minister A.K. Antony and an unwritten practice was that when Karunakaran was Chief Minister, the post of the state chief was given to the Antony faction and vice versa.
In 2001, when Antony took over as Chief Minister, Thennala Balakrishna Pillai moved out to accommodate Muraleedharan as the party president.
But after 2004, things changed with Oommen Chandy taking over from Antony and Ramesh Chennithala becoming the president and since then it was these two leaders who head the two major factions in the party.
Things, however, changed when the party high command surprised everyone by nominating Sudheeran as the new president in 2014, much to the displeasure of the two factions. Many in the party believed this was a wrong move and the relation between Sudheeran and Chandy worsened and is also held to be a cause in the party's defeat in the 2016 assembly polls.
After Rahul Gandhi took over as Congress President, he tried to end the power of group leaders here, but his moves met strong resistance as both Chandy and Chennithala strongly opposed it.
According to a senior party leader, Gandhi appears to have been convinced by these two state leaders that yet another experiment could be disastrous for the party.
Of the present probables, while Muraleedharan is acceptable to both Chandy and Chennithala and also enjoys a sizeable following, Ramachandran has the full blessings of the party high command, even though he does not enjoy much of a support either among the leadership of the party here, nor the cadres.
"Well, in our party you never know, just like Sudheeran who was in political wilderness was made the party chief in 2014, there could be a dark horse too and one such leader is K. Sudhakaran," said the senior leader.
He however warned any wrong move would impact the party's future in the state.
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Confident we are going to win Kerala: Shashi Tharoor
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed confidence in the victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, saying the Congress-led alliance will win more than 75 seats out of the total 140 in the state.
Tharoor, who hails from Kerala, said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls, most of which predicted a victory for the UDF that has been out of power for 10 years in the state.
"We have been on the ground. I have campaigned in 59 constituencies across 12 districts out of 14. I was very confident we are going to win.
"Everything that I have picked up from not just my party colleagues and workers but also from other observers, media and others have always convinced me that we were going to score a comfortable win of above 75 seats. And all the (exit) polls have confirmed the same thing," he told reporters here.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls but in general he was not a big fan of exit polls in India.
"Because ours is not purely a homogenous society. We have to take into account gender issue, caste issue, class issue, regional disparities. You never get a convincingly large enough sample to give an accurate poll and now there is the additional complication that we have heard about in West Bengal this year that many people are unwilling to answer the questions of the pollsters," he said.
The Congress leader said normally, it used to be below 10 per cent that people said that they would not answer.
"Even if you are a reputable exit pollster, in Bengal, one polling company has said 60 per cent of people refused to answer. So, what is the worth of a poll where 60 per cent of your respondents have not answered," he said.
Several exit polls on Wednesday predicted a comeback by the Congress-led UDF in Kerala after 10 years, dethroning the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Polling for the 140-member Kerala assembly was held on April 9. Results of assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Puducherry, besides Kerala, will be announced on May 4.
