Three hours of talks at Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s home in New Delhi on Saturday failed to yield a breakthrough on the choice of the new Kerala chief minister.
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, expressed displeasure at the battle of flex boards and street demonstrations among the three contenders for the hot seat.
He urged the trio — party general secretary (organisation) and MP from Alappuzha, K.C. Venugopal, former Opposition Leader V.D. Satheesan and his predecessor Ramesh Chennithala — to remove the scores of flex boards and hoardings put up across the state championing their rival causes.
Rahul’s stand that the party leadership would not announce its pick for chief minister while the contenders’ loyalists are wrangling in the streets has come as a huge blow to the trio.
Satheesan has urged party workers to remove all the flex boards and hoardings by Saturday night. He has said the street demonstrations by party workers have somewhat dented the Congress-led United Democratic Front’s remarkable performance in winning 102 of the 140 seats.
All the three contenders, looking grim after the day’s meeting in New Delhi, came out to meet the media along with the Kerala unit chief, Sunny Joseph, and the party general secretary in charge of the state, Deepa Das Munshi.
Das Munshi urged party activists in Kerala to refrain from any more demonstrations.
“A final decision on who is going to be the next chief minister of Kerala will be taken in due course by the Congress high command,” she said.
“Kerala (saw) a landslide victory, but over the last two to three days, some overenthusiastic party workers have resorted to unruly incidents. We have requested them to stop such practices.”
A party insider told The Telegraph that the Congress leadership had been unable to take a decision on who should be chief minister mainly because of Satheeshan’s pressure tactics.
He said the party was finding it difficult to reject outright the request from the Indian Union Muslim League, the second-largest ally in the coalition after the Congress, to appoint Satheesan as chief minister.
Venugopal, widely seen as the front-runner, believes that since the Congress has a sizable number of MLAs – 63 – it need not take the IUML’s (22 seats) demand seriously.
“The IUML is keen to have five ministers in the upcoming cabinet,” the Congress
insider said.
“It can achieve this if Satheesan helms the government; Venugopal is expected to oppose this. So, the IUML wants Satheesan as chief minister.”
So far, the IUML has orally been offered only four ministry berths. When Oommen Chandy headed the government, he had succumbed to pressure and given the IUML a fifth minister, causing a big controversy and angering the Hindu and Christian
communities.
The two party central observers, Mukul Wasnik and Ajay Maken, have in their report on the Congress legislative party meeting recommended Venugopal, Chennithala and Satheesan in that sequence before Rahul.
In Kerala, a scramble is on to remove the flex boards put up in front of Indira Bhavan —the state Congress headquarters in Thiruvananthapuram — and other vantage points.
Kerala High Court has banned political parties from putting up flex boards and hoardings.
