KOCHI: Resentment is growing within the Congress state unit following the debacle in the Chengannur bypoll. More so with youth leaders gunning for a change in party leadership in Kerala, including the immediate removal of KPCC president M M Hassan.
They also want the party High Command to entrust more responsibility with young leaders to guide the party in the 2019 Lok Sabha and the 2022 Assembly elections.With senior leader Oommen Chandy being made the AICC general secretary in-charge of Andhra Pradesh, there also exists a sense of negativity towards Opposition Leader Ramesh Chennithala. The general feeling is that he failed to shift the voter-sentiment in favour of the Congress candidate by highlighting the LDF Government’s ‘failures’, be it the ‘police atrocities’ or the ‘law and order problems’. Chennithala also takes the blame for the booth-level weakness of the organisation.
“Oommen Chandy, who paid a visit to the Syrian Orthodox Church Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II when he visited the state, has in someway shifted the Orthodox faction’s voting pattern towards the LDF candidate,” reasoned a senior Congress leader.Further, sources said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in his meeting with Aphrem II, assured him the government will implement the Supreme Court order to hand over the control of the churches to the Orthodox group.
This is understood to have helped swing the votes of over 25,000-strong Orthodox faction towards the left candidate.Party candidate D Vijayakumar himself, on the eve of the counting, had aired the view that weak organisation affected the poll campaign.With the BJP working determinedly to expand its foothold in the state, the Congress High Command is expected to address the demand for a change in the KPCC leadership.
According to sources, AICC president Rahul Gandhi is abroad and the announcement of a new KPCC president is likely to happen only after his return.V T Balram MLA fired the first salvo against the leadership saying the party should immediately make a course correction and make organisational changes in the wake of the Chengannur fiasco.“Naturally, the Congress and the UDF have to learn a few lessons from this massive poll debacle in a constituency like Chengannur even though the situation was extremely favourable,” he said in a Facebook post.
Chennithala and Oommen Chandy have been the prominent faces of the grand old party for over the past 12 years in Kerala. “It’s time for a change now,” said another leader.While the deteriorated law and order issue could not be highlighted effectively in the campaign, the leaders were devoting their time to defend the CPM’s allegation that the Congress was adopting a soft-Hindutva stand by fielding Ayyapa Seva Sangham leader Vijayakumar as its candidate.Mathew Kuzhalnadan, another youth leader and state president of the All India Professional Congress (AIPC) termed the bypoll result highly disappointing.
“The party should conduct a self-introspection. It cannot move forward like this. The Congress should retrieve the people’s trust. The party should be revamped entirely,” said his Facebook post.According to him, the message of the Chengannur byelection result is the party will become irrelevant in the state if it is reluctant for a change.
“The old style of functioning will not bring any achievement. An entire shift is inevitable,” he said.
V M Sudheeran, a former KPCC president, also used the occasion to demand a ‘surgery’ in the party, instead of ‘skin treatment’. “This defeat has forced a surgery in the party, and the need of the hour is not a surface-level treatment,” he said.