THIRUVANANTHAPURAM : The BJP leadership had considered veteran Congress leader and former deputy chairman of Rajya Sabha PJ Kurien as the consensus candidate for the vice president election in 2024.
Parliamentary Affairs minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi had met him twice with the message from the Prime Minister and requested him to meet Narendra Modi to finalise the decision, Kurien reveals in an interview that is part of the memoirs Sathyathilekkulla Yathrakal (Journeys towards Truth), which will be published next month.
Kurien, however, refused to divulge reasons why that proposal hadn't materialised. "I think my wrong interpretation of this matter might be one of the reasons. I don’t want to discuss other ones. If needed, I would disclose those in future," says Kurien in the excerpts of the book published in the June issue of Prasadhakan literary magazine.
Bailing out his mentor AK Antony in the case, Kurien says he hadn't discussed the proposal with Antony as he wanted to tell Sonia Gandhi first, but, that didn't happen.
Rumours of Kurien being proposed as a consensus candidate were rife then and the Congress quickly proposed Gopalkrishna Gandhi as its candidate as if to nip in the bud any discussion about a consensus candidate. Then BJP proposed M Venkaiah Naidu as NDA candidate and Naidu defeated Gandhi by a record margin of 272 votes.
P J Kurien also recalls Naidu's speech in an event at Thiruvalla a few months ahead of the VP election in which he said the country needed Kurien for a higher role. "Oommen Chandy was on stage then. He didn’t utter a word. Naidu’s speech gave Chandy more energy to pull strings against me," he says.
Subsequently, Kurien saw his Rajya Sabha seat being handed over to UDF constituent Kerala Congress (M) on a platter. "Jose K Mani told me over phone that they were given the seat even though they hadn’t demanded. He asked me how could they say no when they were offered a seat," he says.
Alleging that Oommen Chandy decided to gift the seat to KC(M), Kurien says Ramesh Chennithala also supported Chandy though he had told him that he would push Kurien's name as Chennithala wanted him to be in Delhi. "Though I had been a key facilitator for A group in Delhi for years, Chandy hadn’t told me anything about this decision. I was deeply pained," he says.
Kurien also reveals the secret behind another major controversy in the state politics. The notorious special flight journey undertaken by AK Antony from Delhi to Thiruvananthapuram in March, 1995 was also arranged by him as instructed by Chandy. "I met PV Narasimha Rao and requested for the special flight. Antony had no clue about that. Later, Antony chided me for doing that," he says.