The Congress’s national leadership has woken up to the peril of inner party leaks and infighting, which it fears will break the hard-won organisational cohesion in Kerala ahead of the crucial local body elections in 2025.
A series of media “disclosures” about a purportedly growing rift between Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K. Sudhakaran and Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan has come as a blow to the All India Congress Committee’s (AICC) hope of putting behind years of infighting in the State unit and uniting the party to win the local body elections and the Assembly elections in 2026.
‘Disturbing trend’
Consequently, on July 27, Deepa Dasmunshi, the AICC general secretary in charge of Kerala, wrote to the chairman of the KPCC disciplinary committee, Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, to ferret out individuals who undermine party discipline by planting “exaggerated and untrue reports” about organisational matters in the media. Ms. Dasmunshi called the trend “disturbing” and an attempt to create rifts in the leadership.
The KPCC leadership’s alleged attempt to freeze out Mr. Satheesan from an online leadership meeting triggered the chain of events. Mr. Satheesan skipped a local body byelection-related meeting in Thiruvananthapuram in protest.
The AICC was also reportedly irked by media reports that the online conference brimmed with factional hostility, bitterness, and criticism of Mr. Satheesan. Several leaders complained that the KPCC kept them out of the meeting’s loop.
By some accounts, the KPCC leadership convened the meeting at the instance of some allegedly disgruntled KPCC general secretaries and district party chiefs who felt that Mission 2025, a party programme to win the local body elections, was a trespass on their traditional fiefdoms and organisational jurisdictions.
Satheesan’s mandate
The Congress leadership conclave in Wayanad had tasked Mr. Satheesan with chairing the mission. Consequently, Mr. Satheesan opened direct channels with the party’s rank and file ostensibly to rid the organisation of torpidity at the grassroots level, reportedly rendering some party satraps insecure.
Mission 2025 bore the AICC’s imprimatur. The high command charted the scheme to hedge the party in Kerala against a repeat of the local body election defeat it suffered in 2020 and the Assembly election loss in 2021, despite a strong showing in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Hence, Ms. Dasmunshi has signalled that Congress could ill-afford to allow factionalism and leadership wrangles to retard Mission 2025’s momentum and take public focus off the shortcomings of the Centre and State governments.
