: Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president E.V.K.S. Elangovan is learnt to have sent in his resignation to the Congress high command early this week. While speculation was rife that this could have been a pre-emptive move since the high command was already mulling a change in TNCC leadership, sources close to Mr. Elangovan contended it was voluntary.
Highly placed sources in the Congress said the primary charge against Mr. Elangovan was the unsatisfactory performance of the party in the recent Assembly polls, when it won just eight of the 41 seats it contested as part of the DMK alliance. “There were many complaints of improper candidate selection. The high command feels this was the reason for the poor performance. That the DMK won so many seats and Congress so few has really irked the central leadership,” said a senior leader, on condition of anonymity.
Second, many senior leaders in Tamil Nadu had reportedly complained to the central leadership against Mr. Elangovan’s “unilateral” decision making. Some months ago, veterans P. Chidambaram, K.V. Thangkabalu, M. Krishnaswamy and a few other leaders met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi and spoke strongly against Mr. Elangovan. The general secretary in-charge of Tamil Nadu, Mukul Wasnik, was also believed to have been unhappy with disciplinary actions initiated on many functionaries.
‘Not forced to resign’
Sources close to Mr. Elangovan contended that the resignation was completely voluntary. “He has taken moral responsibility for the performance and offered to quit. At every stage of candidate selection, the high command was kept in the loop. Everything had the concurrence of New Delhi,” the leader added. The leader said one of the crucial reasons for the Congress not winning many seats was the lack of funding. The former Union Minister’s loyalists have stressed that it was Mr. Elangovan who revived the party following the TMC split in 2014 and managed to keep the party in the media.
A leader close to Elangovan attributed the party’s relatively poor show in the polls to lack of funds
