THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The State Congress is unlikely to see organisational elections to elect the State Congress president and other office-bearers. Rather, there would be consensus candidates at all levels. After the KPCC executive committee meeting held here on Friday, president K Sudhakaran said even though he is keen to see elections happening, the final decision on whether to take consensus route or poll route will be taken by the central Congress leadership.
G Parameshwara, former deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, who has been appointed as the returning officer for state Congress elections, reached Thiruvananthapuram on Friday for holding preliminary talks with state leadership. The last time organisational elections were held in the state was in 1993 when Vayalar Ravi became the state Congress president.
During last October, the central committee had announced the schedule for the organisational elections.
The state Congress committee elections are scheduled to be held from July 21 to August 22. Senior Congress leaders Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala were initially keen on holding elections. But with their respective groups diminishing in size, especially the ‘I’ group, they have also changed their initial stand. “We are actually going ahead with the poll procedure so that the membership campaign can be kicked off from March 1 onward. If the central leadership decides that consensual candidates can be chosen, then we will backtrack from the organisational elections”, a top Congress leader told TNIE.
Currently, the leadership is trying to wrap up the delayed overhauling of the district committees by this month itself. At the executive meeting, Chennithala targeted the incumbent leadership for not holding prolonged protest against the LDF Government’s SilverLine project. After the executive committee meeting, Sudhakaran told reporters here that they will take a cue from the historical farmers’ protest and hold a similar massive agitation against the K-Rail.
“The state will reverberate with slogans of ‘No to K -Rail, Yes to Kerala’ in the coming days which will be the biggest ever agitation the state is going to witness. Door-to-door campaign will see the leaflets prepared by the UDF against the high-speed rail corridor being distributed. This will be followed by various tiered protests ranging from district, block committee and mandalam committee meetings taking place to district collectorate marches,” said Sudhakaran. Opposition Leader V D Satheesan and Sudhakaran will be convening district-level conventions against K-Rail.