In resumption of internal tussles in the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC), its president E.V.K.S. Elangovan on Friday slapped a show-cause notice on All India Congress Committee member Karti Chidambaram for holding a meeting of party workers without the consent of the leadership.
Mr. Elangovan termed the speech made by Mr. Karti at the Thursday meeting “anti-party” that promoted groupism. If the son of the former Union Finance Minister, P. Chidamabaram, failed to provide a proper response by January 30, he would be removed from party membership, he said.
The notice came after Mr. Karti launched an initiative termed ‘G67’ to bring together those who were born in or after 1967 — the year the Congress lost power in Tamil Nadu.
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Reiterating the view he expressed at a party meeting a few months ago, Mr. Karti told the gathering, which consisted of representatives from each of the 234 Assembly constituencies, that invoking the past alone would not do any good for the Congress.
In a sharp dissection of the woes being encountered by the Congress, he said in a hero-centric political discourse such as that of Tamil Nadu, there was a necessity to project a popular face as the leader. Such a leader should be one who could provide the party with a “core idea” to take to the people. Parties such as the Congress and the Communists have suffered because of a lack of face, he lamented.
But what seemed to have miffed the TNCC leadership is his positive reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi peppered throughout his speech.
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Whether one liked Mr. Modi or not, Mr. Karti said the man’s success could be attributed to his successful projection of a strong idea at a time when people were looking for a change. “Whether I like it or not is a different issue, but we need to appreciate Mr. Modi’s political knowledge,” he said in the Thursday speech, a video of which was tweeted by him on Friday morning.
Mr. Karti said while secularism as an ideal could work for politics against the BJP nationally, the case was different in Tamil Nadu where the Dravidian parties were the principal players. “We have to tell the people in what way we are different from the Dravidian parties,” he said, citing as example policies that could replace alcohol as the major revenue generator in the State.
Speaking to The Hindu on Friday, he said he had not received the notice and came to know of it only through the media. “I hope the people who issued the notice listened to what I said in the meeting. But I doubt it,” he opined.
According to party rules, an AICC member could be removed only by the central leadership. The TNCC president could make a recommendation after placing the matter before the disciplinary committee.