THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: As many as five sitting Congress MPs in Kerala are not keen to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. Reason: They think it will be tough to defend their seats as the party state leadership is yet to start d preparations for the polls while CPM has already made giant strides with its groundwork.
It was Shashi Tharoor and T N Prathapan who first expressed their desire to shift their focus to the state. It did not go downwell with the state leadership. Kozhikode MP M K Raghavan is also eying a state berth. So is Attingal MP Adoor Prakash. It’s learnt that state Congress chief K Sudhakaran will also not be contesting the polls.
“The Congress in the state has become a divided house ever since Tharoor hinted at his desire to focus on state politics,” senior party leader Mullappally Ramachandran said. Adding to the Congress’ woes, there has been a massive erosion in the party’s support base among minorities, he told TNIE.
The Congress had a dream run in the 2019 LS elections under his stewardship, with the party sweeping 15 of the 16 seats it contested, and its allies bagging four. The CPM had to be content with a single seat. Mullapally had undertaken Janamaha Yatra to connect with people, and launched ‘My booth, My pride’ campaign which saw 25,000 booth committees appointed, many of them with women presidents, soon after he took over the reins.
The slogan “20:20” (meaning the party will win all 20 LS seats in Kerala) raised by Mullappally and then Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala has now been snatched away by the CPM, a Congress MP from Malabar rued.
‘Defending seats will be tough for MPs’
“The CPM-led LDF has hijacked our 20:20 slogan. Besides, even the BJP has claimed that it will win five seats in the state. They both have started the work at the ground level, Where does the Congress stand? With the state leadership not taking any steps to undertake organisational revamping, it is going to be really hard for the sitting MPs to defend their seats,” the MP told TNIE.
However, a top Congress leader told TNIE that all the allegations against the state party leadership are false. The party has already started Vision 2024. “We have already appointed observers in several constituencies where work is going on diligently,” he said.
Meanwhile, the state Congress leadership came out with a statement that an election monitoring cell has been constituted at Indira Bhavan with party general secretary Mariapuram Sreekumar as the chairman and M K Rahman as the convener.