‘‘It is a victory for Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in safeguarding his personal political interests,’’ said G. Sukumaran Nair, general secretary, Nair Service Society (NSS), here on Tuesday.
The backhanded pat comes in the wake of the setback suffered by Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president Ramesh Chennithala in securing a berth in the State Cabinet.
Speaking to The Hindu on Tuesday, the NSS chief said his organisation, as one of the architects of the United Democratic Front’s victory in the last Assembly election, was closely watching the recent developments, which, according to him, could have been easily averted by the Chief Minister.
‘‘We believe that these developments, one involving the coalition partners on the issue of Deputy Chief Ministership and the other by group loyalists on the issue of Home portfolio, have been aggressively precipitated by the Chief Minister’s camp to thwart the entry of a majority community representative into a key position,’’ Mr. Nair said. Interestingly, the NSS views this as a conflict between Union Defence Minister A.K. Antony, who wants to tidy the house and set the party in election mode before the next Parliament election, and Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, who has his eyes set on the 2016 Assembly election. ‘‘I would hold all the three, Mr. Chandy, Mr. Chennithala, and Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan, culprits in taking the Congress party to the present position where it is deeply getting drawn into dependence on minority interests. Mr. Nair took a serious view of the attempts on the part of the Congress leadership to involve the NSS too much in the crisis in the Kerala Congress(B). ‘‘It is part of a grand strategy to disparage the organisation which has no connection with the political ideology of the party,’’ he said.
‘‘The chairmanship of the Forward Community Welfare Commission offered to R. Balakrishna Pillai is as the leader of a coalition partner,’’ he said The offer is only to thwart K.B. Ganesh Kumar’s re-entry.
