KOCHI: The protest by three Kochi Municipal Corporation councillors - two from Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and one from Kerala Congress (M) - against the working style of Mayor Soumini Jain, proved anticlimactic, when Johnson Pattathil - the lone KC(M) councillor and one of the three dissenters - attended the council meeting on Wednesday.
‘Express’ on Tuesday had reported about the councillors softening their stand against Jain.
The trio, comprising Pattathil and IUMLs’ P M Haris and T K Ashraf, had earlier criticised Jain’s working style and complained that she was behaving autocratically. In protest, they had categorically stated that they would join the council after party leaders intervened in the issue and even kept off from the council and the steering committee meetings.
But, Pattathil’s attendance in Wednesday’s meeting seems to have derailed the protests. However, he did not raise any issue before the council and was seemingly silent during the meeting, despite the opposition unleashing a major protest in the council against UDF.
“It is now crystal clear that the allegations raised against the Mayor were baseless, which made Pattathil attend the council meet on Wednesday. There is no such issue in the party and even if there was, we would certainly interfere,” said a source in the UDF, preferring anonymity.