CHENNAI: Taking moral responsibility for the party’s poll debacle in the state Assembly elections, Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president K V Thangkabalu resigned on Saturday.
Briefing mediamen during a hurriedly-called-for press conference at the party’s Satyamurthi Bhavan headquarters in the city, Thangkabalu said, “Bowing to the people’s verdict in Assembly polls, I have decided to step down from the post of TNCC president.” Categorically denying any ‘outside pressure’ to quit the influential post, Thangkabalu said, “It was my own personal decision given the people’s remarkable mandate delivered on Friday.”
Asked whether he would continue as TNCC president post if All India Congress Committee (AICC) president Sonia Gandhi so desired, Thangkabalu said, “By owing moral responsibility for the trouncing, I have resigned. It is up to the party high command Soniaji to decide on those issues and I will abide by her order.”
Pressure has been mounting on Thangkabalu, who took charge in July 2008, to quit the post after intra-party rivalry among different factions came out in the open during the recent election.
A few groups had even organised a dharna inside Satyamurthi Bhavan asking him to quit the post to save the Congress image in the state.
The factions claimed that he had ‘pledged’ the national party to the (then) ruling DMK party and was diminishing the Congress identity in the state.
While Thangkabalu’s wife Jayanthi was the officially announced candidate for the Mylapore constituency in the recent polls, her application was ‘mysteriously’ rejected and Thangkabalu, who had filed his papers as a dummy candidate for his wife, out of nowhere, ‘surfaced’ as the party’s official candidate.
Irked over his backhanded attempt to take the Mylapore seat, a rebel Congress candidate, who was supported by an anti-Thangkabalu faction, ran against him and confronted him during the campaign.
Thangkabalu was finally handed a humiliating defeat by his AIADMK rival R Rajalakshmi who won by a margin of around 30,000 votes.
Thangkabalu is a former member of the 10th and 14th Lok Sabhas elected from Salem.
However, his electoral fortunes have been on a downward spiral since he lost the 2009 parliamentary election.