Cong Puts Pedal on Kerala Assembly Election Preparations, Appoints Media Panel

NEW DELHI/THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:
With more than 15 months to go for the elections to the 140-member Kerala Legislative Assembly, the Congress party’s high command has appointed a panel of their leaders to work in close coordination with its state committee for smoother functioning of the media related activities.

The committee which will work closely with the Kerala unit of the party is headed by senior leader Mohan Kumaramangalam, who is the national media coordinator, and includes two coordinators — Lavanya Ballal Jain and Gautam Seth — besides two research coordinators, Smit Singh and George Kurian.

The Congress high command appears to have taken over its Kerala unit which has been facing factional feud issues for a very long time.

Factionalism is nothing new in the party here with K. Karunakaran and A.K. Antony heading the two dominant groups for nearly three decades starting from the 1970s. After them it was Oommen Chandy and Ramesh Chennithala who headed the two dominant factions.

Following Chandy’s health issues in 2020 and later his death, the faction was left leaderless.

After Pinarayi Vijayan created electoral history by becoming the first government in the state to retain power twice (in 2021), the Congress party was in disarray as it was sure to win the battle. The loss further aggravated the internal divisions.

Then came K. Sudhakaran, who became the state party president of Congress and V.D. Satheesan took over as the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly. With the new appointments, there, however, has been no respite to the factional feud and washing of dirty linen in public.

Fed up with this never-ending factional feud, the entire top brass from the party in Kerala was called to Delhi early this month. The party high command issued a stern warning, saying that indiscipline would not be tolerated at any cost.

After this meeting, the Congress party decided to form a committee which will work in unison with the state party unit. The committee will ensure that there is coordination in the state party unit in handling media-related activities.