The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Karunakaran issue to dominate Congress meet

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Mar 03, 2006

Kerala

Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Karunakaran issue to dominate Congress meet

Girish Menon

READY FOR THE BIG EVENT: Congress leaders leading a procession to the State party meet venue at Ambedkar Stadium in Kochi on Thursday. Photo: H. Vibhu

Thiruvananthapuram: The Karunakaran factor will dominate the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee's grand conference in Kochi, the first of its kind to be held in the past 18 years.

The conference from March 3 to 7 has been convened at the end of a year-long revamp process of the Congress after the split led by the former Chief Minister K. Karunakaran.

On Friday, a Congress leadership meeting will be held to decide the agenda for the conference. All-India Congress president Sonia Gandhi will address a public meeting on Saturday, marking the official start of the conference. A cultural meeting, to be inaugurated by the cine actor Govinda, MP, and a development seminar will be held on Sunday.

A Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) general body meeting will be held on Monday, at which various resolutions to be adopted by the plenary session the following day will be decided. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee will inaugurate the plenary session that will adopt separate economic and political resolutions to be later transformed into the party's manifesto.

The conference is significant because it seeks to convey the message that the Congress in Kerala is vibrant and still a force to reckon with even after the split. It also seeks to convey the preparedness of the Congress for the Assembly election. It is, therefore, an irony that the party leadership is being forced into a debate on whether Mr. Karunakaran and his team need to be accommodated within the United Democratic Front (UDF) or the Congress fold.

A majority of the senior Congress leaders are against Mr. Karunakaran's entry in any form: either as a constituent of the UDF or a homecoming. According to them, the Congress has already gone ahead with its revamp process and any decision to accommodate Mr. Karunakaran will derail this process. Besides, the Congress, they say, will have to accept the basic premise that prompted Mr. Karunakaran to quit — the premise being a level playing field for him and his son, K Muraleedharan.

Senior leaders, including Chief Minister Oommen Chandy; KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala; Electricity Minister Aryadan Mohammed; and the UDF Convener K Sankaranarayanan are against accommodating Mr. Karunakaran.

While accepting Mr. Karunakaran back, the Congress will also have to find a slot for the nine MLAs who quit the party with him.

The homecoming will also be resisted by a host of middle-level leaders whose career prospects brightened after the split. The former Chief Minister A.K. Antony is likely to argue for a honourable return for Mr. Karunakaran, a position that is consistent to the one he had taken during the tumultuous days that led to the split.

There is another segment in the Congress that feels that Mr. Karunakaran should be brought back into the UDF fold in order to shore up the party's chances of returning to power. This segment has supporters within the UDF, such as the IUML.

Despite the heat the issue is likely to generate, the position of Mr. Chennithala and Mr. Chandy will finally prevail with the Congress High Command. In any case, the attempt will be to settle the matter within the KPCC, instead of taking it to the High Command.

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