The Congress party set the ball rolling for the panchayat and municipal elections with the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) holding an emergency meeting of senior functionaries here on Monday to take stock of the current political situation and discuss how to turn this in favour of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the elections.
The panchayat polls, expected to be held in September, will see elections to 978 gram panchayat councils, 59 municipal councils, five city corporations, 152 block panchayat councils and 14 district panchayat councils.
The KPCC meeting decided that the tricky issue of seat negotiations would be left to the district committees which would hold talks with individual UDF alliance partners in the respective districts. The district party presidents would be the final arbiters as regards sharing of seats among the partners.
KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala told presspersons that seat negotiations would be held locally, with the local leaders of each party. He said the sharing of seats would be on the basis of the strength of each alliance partners in the respective areas.
The meeting is said to have decided that the Congress would not succumb to the “undue demands” of the alliance partners. No ‘ultimatums' by the UDF partners would be entertained.
A party official told The Hindu that the party was anticipating a pro-UDF wind in the panchayat elections against the backdrop of the presumed disenchantment of the people. The panchayat election is viewed as the stepping stone to a victory in next year's Assembly election. “The panchayat elections will sow the seeds, the Assembly elections will reap the gains,” he said.
Monday's meeting, which expressed concern over the current upsets to communal harmony in the State, decided to launch a series of campaigns against religious extremism. These would in fact be the pre-election campaigns of the UDF. On July 31, ‘anti-extremism' dharnas would be held in 280 places across the State and in the following fortnight several meetings would be held at the mandalam level. There would also be ‘house calls' by party workers, ostensibly to sensitise people against extremism.
The Congress is upbeat about the panchayat elections as it hopes to wrest a sizeable number of panchayats and municipalities from the LDF this time.
