THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A crucial meeting of the KPCC executive committee is slated at the Indira Bhavan here on Saturday, with a view to shift gears and ensure a new drive for the organisation in the election year ahead.
Aimed at charting out a new course towards altering the limping membership drive and organisational polls in the state Congress unit, the meet is also expected to become a session for serious introspection on the rating of the four-year-old Congress-led UDF Government in the state and where to go from here.Scanning the current political climate in the state at a time when the Oommen Chandy Government is hard hit by the never-ending bar bribery scams, the meet is poised to become a bid for a damage-control exercise as well and position the party battle-ready ahead of the nearing local bodies and Assembly polls.
The bypoll in Aruvikkara Assembly segment, necessitated by the demise of G Karthikeyan while he was serving as Speaker, has been pegged as the litmus test to prove the organisational might, as it will definitely have a bearing on the response of the electorate in the succeeding polls.
The compulsions of coalition politics for the Congress on the one hand of working as the leading UDF partner and on the other of saving the wafer-thin majority wielding government, have resulted in a general feeling that the party had succumbed too much to the pressures of the coalition partners. Defending the cause and interests of Kerala Congress chairman and Finance Minister K M Mani has now become the task of the Chief Minister. But with Excise Minister K Babu and a few more ministers, irrespective of Congress group affiliations also coming under a cloud in the bar bribery scam, the public perception is heavily tilted against the government, leaving the government in a slippery course now. This issue is going to figure prominently during discussions at the executive meet, key leaders in the party feels. E M Sudarshana Nachiappan, Rajya Sabha MP of Congress from Tamil Nadu, who is the returning officer to the party organisational polls in the state, will attend the meet. Serious discussions on retrieving lost ground for the party and the government, and an inevitable plainspeak would take place in the meet, according to sources.
With V M Sudheeran in the presidential chair, the chief minister and other Congress ministers, DCC presidents, former KPCC presidents, parliamentary party leaders, party spokespersons, joint secretaries and state presidents of feeder organisations and party cells will participate in the meet, in addition to the 105 executive committee members.