Padmaja Venugopal, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) general secretary and late Chief Minister K. Karunakaran’s daughter, has joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
BJP Kerala-in-charge, Prakash Javedkar, formally welcomed her into the party fold at a brief function at its headquarters in New Delhi.
Ms. Venugopal said she was pained to renounce the party “she was born into. “I greatly respect Sonia Gandhi, but she has become remote and inaccessible. My father also felt similarly shunned by the Congress leadership, which is ultimately responsible for my shift to the BJP. The Congress has no single unifying leader like Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” Ms. Venugopal said.
Two high-profile defections from the Congress to the BJP in the past 11 months have stunned the KPCC and raised scepticism about the State leadership’s ability to close ranks at the time of a pivotal national election. The desertions have arguably undermined the Congress’s anti-BJP, secular and patently pro-minority messaging at the hustings.
In April last year, Congress Working Committee member and former Chief Minister A.K Antony’s son, Anil K. Antony, deserted the Congress to join the BJP. He is currently contesting on the BJP ticket from the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency.
The jury was out on whether the BJP would repeat the same pattern and consider Ms. Padmaja a possible candidate from the Chalakudy constituency to unsettle the Congress incumbent, Benny Behanan.
The BJP had accorded the Chalakudy seat to the BDJS, an NDA ally, which was yet to declare its candidate. Mr. Javedkar refused to comment on the BJP’s plans for Ms. Venugopal.
Ms. Venugopal said she had been seething inwardly for three years since the KPCC “rewarded” a Congress leader “singularly responsible” for her failure by a wafer-thin margin of 900 votes in the Thrissur Assembly segment in 2016 with a top organisational post.
She said she had stood steadfastly with the Congress when her father, K. Karunakaran, and brother, K Muraleedharan, MP, splintered the party in 2005 to form the now-defunct Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran).
Ms. Venugopal denied forsaking her father’s stridently anti-Sangh Parivar political legacy. She said Karunakaran was more anti-LDF than anti-BJP. “The BJP was a non-entity in Kerala politics during his heydays,” she said.
Ms. Venugopal’s firm repudiation of the Congress ahead of the Lok Sabha polls drew sharp and sarcastic criticism from her brother, Mr. Muraleedharan. He accused his sister of betraying the party and abandoning their father’s secular legacy. Others, including senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala, followed suit in criticising Ms. Venugopal.
