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Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram
By Girish Menon
Later in the day, the Karunakaran faction decided to participate in the succeeding days' debates on the demands for grants for various departments, including those held by UDF partners. The Parliamentary Affairs Minister, M. M. Hassan, held a series of meetings with senior Karunakaran supporters and the KPCC president, K. Muraleedharan, but it did not yield any result. Mr. Antony's refusal to meet a handful of Karunakaran supporters was on the ground that he would have to give up his earlier position that he would not meet Congress MLAs on a factional basis. Besides, it is being pointed out that Mr. Antony took this position earlier on the basis of Mr. Muraleedharan's advice that the Chief Minister need not meet the Karunakaran supporters on a factional basis. Mr. Muraleedharan had taken such a position when his relations with the Chief Minister were cozy and warm prior to the Rajya Sabha elections. In any case, by limiting his faction's boycott to just two days, Mr. Karunakaran was only trying to prove a point. The first two days' debates on demands for grants were for two important portfolios--Home and General Administration--held by the Chief Minister. Mr. Karunakaran's action was obviously meant for the consumption of the party high command and the message he sought to convey was that his campaign was directed only at Mr. Antony and not at the UDF Government or important coalition partners. For Mr. Karunakaran, sending such a message to Delhi, had become an imperative in the backdrop of the charges he had to face during the Rajya Sabha election imbroglio that he was planning a vertical split in the Congress. Significantly, the decision to participate in the debates comes a day prior to the one on Industry and Information Technology, held by the IUML, the second largest and powerful partner. Mr. Karunakaran did not want to risk the wrath of the IUML, which could indeed turn out to be an important ally later if things became too hot for Mr. Antony. In addition, he could stave off his detractors' retaliatory action against his own nominees in the Antony Cabinet, the Electricity Minister, Kadavoor Sivadasan, and the Health Minister, P. Sankaran, both of whom have already come in for severe criticism, during the debate on demand for grants for their portfolios on July 2 and July 14 respectively. The Assembly also faced another facet of Congress factionalism today during the debate for demands for grants for Home, with K. C. Venugopal, who belongs to the Third Group in the party, putting into practice the faction's decision to give issue-based support to the official leadership. Mr. Venugopal, who participated in the debate, picked holes in the police policy of the Antony Government by highlighting the high levels of corruption that had set in the police force as a result of the Chief Minister's obstinate stand to keep out political intervention in the police force. He, however, carefully worded his statements if only to ensure that he did not end up giving a handle to the Karunakaran faction, which stayed away from the debate for the second day today. Mr. Venugopal did give credit to the Chief Minister for the way he handled the Marad issue, and defended the IUML, which had come in for criticism at the hands of the Opposition parties, particularly the CPI(M). The Opposition LDF did not lose the chance to make the treasury benches uncomfortable by highlighting the Karunakaran faction's boycott. The CPI(M) deputy leader, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, could not help mentioning the factional differences.
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