THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Way short of achieving its target of 50 lakh memberships by the extended deadline on Friday, the Congress state leadership is making frantic efforts to get the last date of the drive postponed again. Congress state president K Sudhakaran has sought a two-week extension to achieve the ambitious target.
It is reliably learnt that by Thursday evening, only 10.4 lakh new members were enrolled digitally, the lone mode of enrolment until March 24 before the national leadership relented to the state unit’s demands and allowed distribution of paper forms.
The consolidated number of paper membership forms submitted is not available. However, sources said it is not the desired number. The state leadership has now pinned hopes on 26,400 booth committees for making efforts to enrol maximum members. In any case, the Congress state executive meet convened on Tuesday is expected to be a stormy affair given the numbers.
K C Venugopal, Congress national general secretary (organisation), had deputed three national secretaries to Kerala to energise district Congress committee office-bearers for the drive. Of them, P V Mohan and Ivan D’ Souza returned to Karnataka affecting the campaign’s momentum in the Malabar region and central Kerala. Only P Viswanath stayed back, monitoring the membership campaign in south Kerala.
During Ramesh Chennithala’s tenure as the Congress state head, 14.5 lakh members were added to the party. The drive was last held in 2017 during which Congress added 34.8 lakh members against the target of 40 lakh set by then state chief M M Hassan.
DIGITAL HICCUPS
The Congress national leadership had for the first time mooted a digital membership campaign this year. However, despite bringing in the party’s data analytics department officials to expedite the campaign by training workers who carry out door-to-door campaign, the drive did not achieve the desired results. Following repeated requests from the state unit, the national leadership allowed distribution of paper forms from March 24.