KOCHI: As the UDF is keen to capture as many seats as possible in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, the call is getting louder to bring back Congress general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal to recapture the Alappuzha constituency which it had lost in the 2019 elections.
Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala recently said that Alappuzha wants Venugopal back as the party candidate in the LS polls. Following Chennithala’s statement, the demand for Venugopal’s return to the seat is gaining momentum within the party, with leaders and workers extending their support to him.
The thinking within the Congress party is that it may lose a couple of its 15 seats it holds now. So, the strategy is to capture Alappuzha which is now held by CPM’s A M Ariff, and Kottayam, held by Thomas Chazhikadan of LDF ally KC-M, and make up for the expected losses.
Venugopal had contested in Alappuzha in both Assembly and Lok Sabha elections and has never suffered a defeat. Given this background, party leaders are keen to field him again to win back the seat in the Left fortress, which was previously represented by him and former state Congress president V M Sudheeran. The discussions on his candidature came alive after Chennithala called for his return at the party’s workers meeting held in Alappuzha early this month. “If he decides to contest, I will head his election campaign committee,” Chennithala said.
Venugopal, a native of Kannur, was elected to the Assembly for the first time in 1996 at the age of 33 from Alappuzha. He was the state president of the Youth Congress then. He won two more Assembly polls from Alappuzha in 2001 and 2006. In 2004, he became minister for tourism and devaswom in the first Oommen Chandy government. In 2009, Venugopal, as an opposition MLA, contested the Lok Sabha elections from Alappuzha and won by a huge margin. He repeated his victory in 2014 and during his tenure, he also served as a Union minister of state in the UPA government, handling the portfolios of power and civil aviation.
However, in 2019, he decided not to contest from Alappuzha. The UDF lost the seat to CPM’s sitting MLA A M Ariff, despite winning 19 out of the 20 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Venugopal, who currently holds the position of AICC general secretary in charge of organisation, has not lost an election since he entered politics and has grown as a national political figure.