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Fresh feud in Congress likely: Murali

KOZHIKODE: Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) State president K. Muraleedharan said here on Friday that the reunion convention in Kochi organised to signal the return of K. Karunakaran to the Congress would be the starting point of a fresh period of fierce inner-party feud in the Congress.

Mr. Muraleedharan compared the convention to a ceremony at which the ingredients were put together to make explosives. The fireworks (of dissent) would follow from tomorrow, he said.

Mr. Muraleedharan repeated time and again at his press conference what he had been saying about Mr. Karunakaran’s decision to return to the Congress: “It is a move to grab party post… it is political dishonesty….. he has betrayed all those who followed him out of the Congress and joined the NCP” and that “I (Muraleedharan) would never follow him to the Congress.”

The NCP State president scoffed at the Kochi convention being held on Friday, saying its aim was only to boost his (Mr. Karunakaran’s) bargaining strength to obtain a key position in the Congress for himself and some of the supporters who had followed him back to Congress.

“The convention centre in Kochi can accommodate only 10,000. There would be no more than 1,500 NCP workers at that convention,” he said.

It would be a misnomer to call the programme a reunion convention to mark his return to the Congress because Mr. Karunakaran’s return to the Congress was completed during his recent visit to Delhi and his visits to the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee office in Thiruvananthapuram.

He had already inaugurated a Congress dharna in front of the Secretariat. So, the Kochi convention was nothing more than a bargaining tactic, Mr. Muraleedharan said.

He said the future of the NCP would be decided by party leader Sharad Pawar. He expected the NCP to be part of a political front by April-May.

The strength of the NCP in the State would be clearly visible at the party convention to be held in Thrissur on April 26.

In answer to another question, he claimed that his differences with Mr. Karunakaran were not of a personal nature but purely political.

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