All India Congress Committee (AICC) general secretary Tariq Anwar will arrive in Kerala on Monday, burdened with the unenviable task of mitigating fierce factionalism in the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC).
Factional rivalry and fierce impatience with the party’s high command erupted on the public stage on the eve of Mr. Anwar’s “peace mission.”
The party’s organisational shake-up at the block committee president level and upwards had reanimated latent divisions within the KPCC.
United Democratic Front (UDF) convener M.M. Hassan, widely reckoned an ‘A’ group veteran, said a trust deficit plagued the reorganisation drive. Collective leadership, consensus and organisational unity were the causalities. Senior Congress leader and ‘I’ group helmsman Ramesh Chennithala reportedly echoed a similar sentiment when he met KPCC president K. Sudhakaran, MP, at the party headquarters on Saturday.
The tussle at the top centred on the alleged emergence of a new axis of power, a supposed third group, under Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan and Mr. Sudhakaran.
Feel threatened
The ‘A’ and ‘I’ groups felt threatened by the nascent faction, which they believed possessed the high command’s tacit backing and had used its newfound heft to stack key party posts with loyalists who functioned outside the ambit of the traditional blocks.
Mr. Satheesan refused to comment on organisational matters. Nevertheless, Mr. Sudhakaran struck an openly strident tone against the ‘A’ and ‘I’ factions. “A few have wrongly accused the leadership of upending unity and throttling consensus. They were in the extreme minority,” he said.
Boycott plan
Meanwhile, reports that ‘A’ and ‘I’ group loyalists, including scores of newly appointed block presidents, planned to boycott party leadership classes to protest against the “arbitrary reorganisation process” emerged as a worrying backdrop to Mr. Anwar’s assignment to forge peace in the KPCC.
A Congress insider said deal-cutting, power-sharing and political compromise to restore the balance of power between factions might be Mr. Anwar’s mission. However, it might be easier said than done. “The high command knows that the traditional factions are too strong to be dismantled and have a zealous base,” he said.
Hence, the high command seemed poised to tread carefully and has seemingly signalled a patent unwillingness to cross the Rubicon and muffle dissent.
