THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Congress state president K Sudhakaran, who is in Delhi, is giving finishing touches to the draft list of District Congress Committee (DCC) presidents but the major stumbling block is communal balancing. On Friday, he will meet Congress Working Committee member A K Antony after which he will be submitting the draft list to the party high command in the weekend.
Though the draft list is yet to zero in on a single name in each district, the state leadership is hoping to see that the central leadership announces the list before Onam.Over the last few days, Sudhakaran has been camping in the capital city hoping to wrap up talks with senior leaders. He has completed the second round of talks with Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala. Opposition leader V D Satheesan was also a party to these meetings.
Following complaints a section of some Congress MPs, Sudhakaran invited them for a dinner meet on Wednesday. Already, Shashi Tharoor and K Muraleedharan had expressed concern about the Nair community getting more prominence in Thiruvananthapuram district.With BJP making inroads in southern districts, there are differences of opinion among Congress leaders on projecting Ezhava or Nair leaders.
“Compared to previous years, there is no division between the two prominent groups in deciding the DCC heads. The biggest stumbling block is going to be choosing M Liju’s successor in Alappuzha as both national general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal and Chennithala are lobbying for their loyalists. Sudhakaran has asked them to arrive at a consensus,” a senior party leader told TNIE.On Thursday, Sudhakaran met with the three national secretaries who are in charge of the state.
Currently, deciding on Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, Pathanamthitta, Ernakulam, Palakkad and Kasaragod DCC presidents has run into trouble due to the need for social balancing. The lone woman leader currently being considered is Padmaja Venugopal from Thrissur. But there are chances of Rahul Gandhi’s intervention in including more woman DCC leaders in sync with his expressed wish to see the state getting a woman chief minister in future.