KOCHI: One more standing committee chairperson of the Kochi corporation belonging to the Congress resigned on Tuesday in a bid to force Mayor Soumini Jain to step down, making the total number of standing committee heads to quit to two. However, the party’s two more chairpersons are standing their ground, though the deadline set by the Ernakulam District Congress Committee for all of them to resign elapsed on Saturday.
Corporation tax appeal standing committee chairperson K V P Krishna Kumar resigned from the post on Tuesday. On Saturday, Shiny Mathew, who is being considered for the post of mayor, also resigned as the chairperson of the town planning standing committee. Both the members belong to the ‘I’ group.
“Ramesh Chennithala (Opposition leader) and the DCC have asked me to resign from the chairperson post. Based on that, I tendered my resignation to the secretary on Tuesday. Though we met the KPCC chief (Mullapally Ramachandran) the other day, he also asked us to go by the DCC’s instructions,” said Krishnakumar. However, welfare standing committee chairperson A B Sabu, senior ‘A’ faction leader, and development standing committee chairperson Gracy Joseph have ignored the DCC directive.
“There was no agreement in the party to hand over the standing committee chairperson seat after two-and-a-half years. We have some responsibility to the public,” said Sabu.
“This is the last leg of implementing several projects that we had launched and resigning at this juncture is a matter of worry. If we resign from the post, all our efforts will go in vain as only 10 months remain for the present council’s term to end. Even the new chairpersons can’t do anything in such a short period. The reshuffling will also create an adverse impact on the upcoming byelection to the council and the local body elections in 2020,” he added.
Two to quit soon, says Vinodh
However, DCC president and MLA T J Vinodh said the two chairpersons who have not resigned yet will also quit soon. “There was an agreement in the party to hand over the seats after two-and-a-half years. At present, there is no issue in the party. The two councillors will resign from the post. There is no need of taking any disciplinary action against these two councillors,” Vinodh said.