Internal squabble in the Congress in Tamil Nadu has come out in the open as senior leaders loyal to the former Union Minister, P. Chidambaram, on Thursday demanded the resignation of TNCC president B.S. Gnanadesikan.
In a statement, district presidents, former MPs and former MLAs said Congress leaders felt that the party needed “intelligent leadership” to recover from its debacle in the Lok Sabha elections.
“Mr. Gnanadesikan should resign owning responsibility for the defeat,” read the statement signed by Mr. Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram; the former MPs, K.S. Alagiri, Vallalperuman, P.V. Rajendran, and Abdul Kader; and the former MLAs, K.R. Ramasamy, N. Sundaram, M.N. Kandasamy and Vijayakumar.
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While the Congress suffered its worst-ever defeat nationwide, its vote share in the State came down to 4.31 per cent because of the non-performance of the leadership, the leaders said, charging Mr. Gnanadesikan with failure to organise proper campaign.
“Not even a single public meeting was held on behalf of the TNCC. Mr. Gnanadesikan also failed to ensure coordination among leaders and lent no help to the party candidates.”
However, sources close to Mr. Gnanadesikan said that though senior leaders G.K. Vasan, E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan and K.V. Thangkabalu wrote letters to Mr. Chidambaram in connection with the campaign in March itself, he never bothered to reply.
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