Thiruvananthapuram: Upset with the jumbo-size list of 125 office bearers of the Congress in Kerala, the party high command on Thursday refused to give the nod for it.
The list that was submitted to the high command included six working presidents, 13 vice presidents, 36 general secretaries and over 78 secretaries in the state.
According to a top party source, who did not wish to be identified, despite numerous rounds of talks, that the representatives of the high command had with the leaders from the state, the list continued to increase with various faction leaders unwilling to relent to remove anyone from their list. Though, the state party chief Mullapally Ramachandran had said that ‘under no circumstances will he allow the jumbo-size for the party organisation’, the final list had 126 members.
Incidentally, this list was formed after months of deliberations.
As per a source, the high command refused to clear the list as they wanted to go forward with the policy of one person one post, but this was not the case when the final list came out.
And adding to the party woes, after the list was leaked in the media, complaints flooded the high command from the second rung leaders of the party. Their complaint was that merit had been ignored and the only qualification considered for inclusion in the list was ‘affinity to the top leaders in the state’.
A party source said: “Today in the party, if any Congress worker in Kerala has to rise in the organisation, they have to be attached to one of the top brass in the party, which includes Oommen Chandy, Ramesh Chennithala, Ramachandran and the now powerful organisational secretary K.C. Venugopal.”
Besides them, there are a string of leaders who also have some clout with the high command. These include Kodikunnil Suresh, K.V. Thomas, K. Sudhakaran, K. Muraleedharan to name a few, who apart from pushing their own names also try to campaign for the inclusion of their close aides.
Popular media critic A. Jayasankar opined that this is what ails the Congress party in the state as everyone wants to become an office bearer and no one wants to work at the grassroots level.
“The Congress party struggles to send its legislators to the Kerala Assembly form districts like Kollam, Kozhikode, Palakkad and Idukki, as there is a lack of credible leaders, but when it comes to winning the Lok Sabha seats from these districts, the Congress and its allies win easily. There are so many factions within the party at all the levels and the sooner the party ends this, the better it will be,” said Jayasankar.