THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: After hectic parleys in New Delhi, Congress state president K Sudhakaran on Wednesday submitted the final draft list of district Congress committee presidents before the party high command.
However, confusion is still prevailing in the names of leaders in five districts — Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam, Alappuzha, Palakkad and Kottayam.
If it took almost two months to zero in on the probable list of DCC presidents, the next hurdle before the state leadership is to come up with the 51-member committees in each district.Though Sudhakaran had submitted the draft list to Rahul Gandhi on August 15, it had created heartburns in the state Congress, especially among the two factional leaders. They alleged that Sudhakaran had not kept his promise of discussing with them once more before the draft list was submitted. This led Congress president Sonia Gandhi to ask national general secretary in charge of the state Tariq Anwar to hold conciliatory telephonic talks with Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala.
Though the duo maintained that they were not against the draft list, party sources close to the state leadership alleged that they were rooting for their loyalists by using pressure tactics. The draft list for five districts had to be changed after the central leadership insisted that social balancing had to be followed. Even after holding discussions with national general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal and Tariq Anwar on Wednesday, a consensus could not be reached. However, Sudhakaran told the media that he had submitted the list with single name for each district.
“A consensus has been reached in all 14 districts. The Congress high command will announce the final list soon,” said Sudhakaran. However, Anwar was not ready to confirm Sudhakaran’s claim. This shows that the ball is in the court of the Congress high command to decide on the presidents in the disputed five district committees. Sudhakaran is scheduled to return to the state only after the final announcement. A section of the party workers are peeved with the state leadership for prolonging the consultations this far.