KOTTAYAM: Despite the efforts of senior party leaders to settle the issues over the ‘Tharoor wave’ in Congress, the rift within the party further deepened with Shashi Tharoor’s participation in the Youth Congress mega meet held at Erattupetta in Kottayam on Saturday.
Alleging that the event was organised without informing district Congress leadership, DCC president Nattakom Suresh, who kept away from the programme, will submit a complaint to the AICC, KPCC, and state unit of party disciplinary committee on Sunday. “Neither the Youth Congress nor Shashi Tharoor informed the DCC about the event. All members are bound to toe party line. Violating precedence would lead the party into trouble. Hence, the DCC will submit a petition to the party’s higher leadership against Youth Congress, which organised the event without consulting the district leadership, and Tharoor, who failed to intimate his visit to Kottayam to attend a programme of the party’s feeder organisation,” Suresh told TNIE.
Suresh also skipped another function of Tharoor in Pala, owing to his reluctance to share the venue with the latter in view of the current issues.Surprisingly, Kottayam MLA, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, also skipped the Youth Congress programme citing the reason that being the chairman of the party disciplinary committee, his participation in the event may be interpreted in a wrong way.
“When a complaint was raised about not intimating a constitutional body of the party regarding the event, I decided to take a neutral line. I don’t want to align either with the complainant or with the respondent,” Thiruvanchoor said.In a veiled attack on Tharoor, Thiruvanchoor said the precedence and decisions of the party leadership are applicable to all members. “I don’t think Tharoor, who is a prominent face of Congress, would initiate a parallel move in the party. However, we can’t support him when he violates party line,” he said.