BENGALURU: Despite the Congress high command’s attempts to placate former minister MR Seetharam by appointing his son Raksha Ramaiah as the general secretary of Indian Youth Congress (IYC), there are signs that the educator could desert the party ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections.
Seetharam is miffed that he was not picked as one of the two MLCs, who were nominated by the strength of the party in the Assembly. The party instead chose minority wing president Abdul Jabbar and spokesperson Najaraju Yadav. Though the party tried to convince him to contest the 2023 Assembly election from Malleswaram, he is not willing to take up that offer, sources said. “No one from Congress, who has any association with Malleswaram, wants to contest from here. Seetharam too does not want to become a political martyr,” they added.
Having sensed that BJP was trying to woo Seetharam, Congress tried to checkmate the ruling party by appointing Raksha as the Youth Congress secretary on June 3. But now, the 66-year-old educationist, who runs some of the most prominent institutions built by his late father MS Ramaiah, is planning to shake up the Grand Old Party by hosting a convention of his supporters at the Palace Grounds on June 24. He said it is to elicit the response of his followers, who will also come from Chikkaballapura district, where the population of Balija community, to which he belongs, is considerable.
Sources said BJP is trying to pitch the plan of fielding him from the Chikkaballapura Lok Sabha seat in 2024 and Raksha from the Bagepalli Assembly seat in the 2023 polls. The disgruntlement of the father-son duo is obvious as they skipped the Congress protest against ED summons to party leaders Sonia and Rahul Gandhi. Making his intentions clear, Seetharam has distributed handbills which state that some vested interests within Congress were hatching a conspiracy against him. He also listed his contribution to the party since late Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister. He pointed out that he won the Malleswaram seat for the party in 1999 and 2004. But since the 2008 Assembly polls, these vested interests started snubbing him.
He also mentioned how he was ignored for the MLC seat during the recent nomination. “Despite the state leadership proposing my name, it was dropped overnight,” he said.It is known that Congress Legislature Party leader Siddaramaiah is on good terms with Seetharam and had backed his candidature. He is also in the good books of opposition leader in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge.
Seetharam said that though he had prepared well to contest the 2009 Parliamentary election from the Chikkaballapura Lok Sabha seat, he was denied a ticket at the last minute because of the intervention of these elements.
Seetharam told TNIE that recent developments in the party did not go down well with him. “They gave my son the IYC national general secretary post reluctantly and only four months after he sacrificed his state Youth Congress president post to another leader,” he remarked, adding that he will make his political move after the June 24 meeting of his supporters.