The percieved lull in factional fued in the Congress is set to end with the group led by Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram intending to boycott a meeting of recently appointed office bearers on Thursday.
Sources said none of the office bearers loyal to him will take part in the meeting. “There is nothing about these appointments that we can accept - not the appointments, not the way it was done and not the number of our people who have figured on the list,” said a Chidambaram aide.
The source added that Chidambaram has already taken up the matter with the Congress high command. “We were waiting for the Winter Session of Parliament to get over. Now you will see this being taken up in a big way,” the source said.
The meeting scheduled for Thursday is meant to be an informal one, with a formal meeting of the office bearers set to take place on December 22. The list of TNCC appointees had seen the clique led by Union Minister G K Vasan take an iron grip on the State unit. Appointments of 17 vice presidents, 29 general secretaries, 43 executive committee members and 54 District Congress Committee (DCC) presidents had been announced on December 7.Of these, Chidambaram loyalists got just five vice president, six general secretary and eight DCC president posts.
The stand-off between the Vasan clique and Chidambaram is expected to peak shortly. Vasan loyalists have for weeks now been posturing aggressively to ensure that they get to pick candidates for the Lok Sabha polls, over party vice president Rahul Gandhi, whose earlier experiment at choosing candidates in the 2011 ended up in disaster.