Two weeks after the Congress-led United Democratic Front won the Kerala assembly election, the state has a government in place — finally. While it is not uncommon for the Congress to take an inordinately long time to arrive at such decisions, the fortnight-long saga that went back-and-forth between Delhi and Kerala almost soured the only feel good story for the Opposition in this round of assembly elections. Factionalism has been a staple of the Congress — Kerala is not an exception. But this time round, the party high command found itself on a very different terrain. This was not one of those occasions wherein the high command could dictate the terms and everyone would fall in line. Perception matters in politics. V.D. Satheesan had caught the imagination of the masses while K.C. Venugopal — Rahul Gandhi’s man — came across as a power-seeking party functionary who had used his access to the Congress’s First Family to queer the pitch for the former. Mr Satheesan had led the electoral campaign as a collective effort, and this served him well in the war of words and in the behind-the-scenes negotiations. Moreover, the Congress’s allies rallied around him and public sentiment was on his side too. Picking
Mr Venugopal under these circumstances would not only have reflected poorly on the Gandhis but would have also opened the Congress to risks in the two by-elections that would have been necessitated, one to get him elected to the assembly by forcing a resignation and, second, to fill his seat in the Lok Sabha in the state within the next six months. Given the mood in Kerala — it is in favour of Mr Satheesan — and the political sensibility of the people of the state that holds their politicians to account, the Congress leadership did not want to roll the dice and create an embarrassment for itself and the new government so early in its tenure.
In Kerala, round one has gone to Mr Satheesan but Mr Venugopal has managed to get ministerial berths for many of his loyalists. The new chief minister will thus have to work the room.
Mr Satheesan moves into Cliff House — the official residence of the Kerala chief minister — with not a day of experience in administration. Expectations are high, and the Congress needs him to deliver not only to emerge as a potent force in the South but also to prop up an alternative to the ‘Gujarat model’ that has gone national.