THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Congress state leadership has admitted to members of the political affairs committee (PAC) that there was a lack of vigilance from their part in achieving the target of the party’s membership campaign. While senior leaders Mullappally Ramachandran and P J Kurien were conspicuous by their absence, K V Thomas was not invited to the meeting on Monday.
The PAC passed the buck to the central leadership in resolving the issues raised by Mullappally and Kurien. While the central election committee had given a target of 50 lakh membership, the state leadership informed the PAC members that the party has got only 13 lakh digital member request forms and 18 lakh paper requests. The final tally of the paper membership forms is yet to be fully tabulated.
While the central leadership insisted on pasting the photographs on the paper forms, the state unit issued a directive against it which had caused confusion among the party workers. Opposition Leader V D Satheesan in his speech admitted that the membership campaign was started late against the party’s central directive as organisational revamping was given priority.
“The state leadership did not insist on photos so that they could give inflated figures. This has happened when there is a column to paste photos. The total tally achieved in paper forms will be tabulated only after the district committees enter these in excel sheets which have to be then approved by the central leadership. In all likelihood, the paper forms which did not have photos will be rejected by them,” a senior PAC member told TNIE.
Satheesan informed the PAC that all stakeholders, including senior leaders, will be taken into confidence before finalising the candidate for the Thrikkakara assembly byelection. A PAC member said that the family of the late P T Thomas, former Thrikkakara MLA, has been unhappy with the way national general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal and state leaders made a visit to their house recently in a public show.
The PAC members expressed the hope that the grievances of Mullappally and Kurien will be taken up by Venugopal and his team. While Mullappally has been peeved with state unit president K Sudhakaran for not taking him into confidence when taking crucial political decisions, Kurien had lashed out at MP Rahul Gandhi in an article published in a vernacular magazine. Thomas came down heavily on Sudhakaran yet again for not inviting him to the PAC. The meeting also decided to strengthen the protest against the SilverLine project.