THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Congress scion Rahul Gandhi’s penchant for experimenting with new faces, especially in the youth, women and student wings of the party, is well-known. That these rejigs have not helped the party is clear if one looks at the Lok Sabha poll outcome in the state. Dean Kuriakose, state Youth Congress president, was one among the few lucky ones from the state to earn the good will of RaGa. While Dean was leading a rally from the north to south in the state early this year, Rahul Gandhi flew down for the sole purpose of joining the road show for a few hours, while it was progressing through Alappuzha district.
The stars aligned in favour of Dean when the heat generated by the Gadgil-Kasturirangan reports ejected sitting Idukki MP and his mentor P T Thomas, who had locked horns with the Catholic Church, from recontesting. Dean was handpicked to contest from the hilly segment, but lost miserably. Dean, despite being a beneficiary of Rahul Gandhi’s largesse, was helpless when C R Mahesh, YC state vice-president spewed ridicule against his mentor and other central leaders at a three-day state leadership camp held in Thiruvananthapuram.
Mahesh, representing the ‘I’ faction, came out strongly against the style of Rahul Gandhi in leading the party, terming it as one of the reasons for the poor show in the recent Lok Sabha polls. Denouncing the ‘company-like’ and ‘unit management pattern’ adopted by Rahul, Mahesh said that many of the organisational reforms had only distanced the masses. While Mahesh did not name Rahul in his tirade, he referred to his reforms as Tughlaqian. A few leaders were of the view that the RaGa was using the Youth Congress and KSU for experimentation, and it has eventually weakened the outfits. Such experiments need not be followed in the organisational polls of feeder organisations, the meet felt. Interestingly, all those in the current leadership of the Youth Congress and in the KSU are those who were elevated through Rahul Gandhi’s system. The impudence on their part has been seriously noted by emissaries of the central leadership.
M N Sooraj, AICC secretary in charge of Youth Congress and reports directly to Rahul Gandhi, who attended the last day of the camp expressed his displeasure on the manner in which the youth leaders reacted. “Criticism is understandable. But ridiculing the leadership is something which cannot be tolerated,” he reportedly told leaders.Arthanaari, national secretary of the Youth Congress, has also made a note of the ridicule showered on the central leadership. No one is expecting any action against critics as the party high command is yet to recover from the electoral jolt it received.
“The YC stand is not against Rahul Gandhi in any manner,” Dean Kuriakose told The Sunday Standard. “Streamlining of the organisational elections and making the outfit stronger was the prime concern of those who attended the camp. There are some weak spots in the present election process, wherein a person garnering a mere 200 votes in a 60,000-strong YC electorate could become a state secretary. The tenure of office-bearers has to be raised from the present two years to three, for effective functioning of those elected,” he said.