Congress must address the Tharoor factor if it is to survive
When the Gandhi scion is traversing the length and breadth of the country, a contestant for the Congress party president post has embarked on a political journey of a different kind. Shashi Tharoor, Thiruvananthapuram MP, who lost out to Mallikarjun Kharge, is on a trip to rediscover Kerala, his home state.
Kept away from campaigning in Gujarat, Tharoor, it seems, has got a whiff of things in store for him from the high command. So, he has decided to shift his focus to state politics, where Congress is still a powerful force to reckon with. He started with a tour of Malabar, where he met all prominent community leaders, including the powerful Thangal family, the supremo of the Indian Union Muslim League, a dominant partner in the Congress-led UDF. He also met Christian bishops and cultural personalities. After this, Tharoor will inaugurate a function of the Nair Service Society (NSS), a prominent body of upper caste Hindus who have always called the shots in Kerala politics, especially Congress politics.
The state leaders, particularly Opposition Leader V D Satheesan, are rattled. They are playing all the cards to scuttle Tharoor’s trip. DCCs have been told not to get involved in Tharoor’s programmes. But nothing has doused Tharoor’s energy. He seemed least anxious about the diktats of the current leadership as he is getting a rousing welcome wherever he goes, especially from the youth.
All these have created quite a lot of confusion within the rank and file of the party unit, which is yet to recover completely from the humiliating defeat it suffered in the 2021 assembly polls. It is still unclear precisely what his intentions are as he has many a time referred to the “multiple options’’ he has. Is he trying to be the power centre in Congress politics in Kerala or just testing the waters before taking a crucial political plunge? Whichever way, the current imbroglio is not helping the Congress. It has already lost its opposition space to a belligerent governor who is locking horns with the government, and it is not in a space where it can afford another split. If the Congress leadership is careful enough to handle the situation amicably, it will be good for the party. Otherwise, the Congress’ national leadership will have to watch helplessly as one of its strongest bastions gets washed away due to its lack of astuteness.