The All India Congress Committee (AICC) has reportedly called for an immediate halt of the seemingly unremitting hostilities and war of words in the party’s State unit over Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor’s alleged “oneupmanship and proactive attempts to shore up political support for himself by operating outside the Congress’s organisational ambit”.
Mr. Tharoor has, however, vehemently denied the accusations.
The AICC has tasked AICC general secretary Tariq Anwar to monitor whether the ceasefire will hold. The AICC felt it was bounden on the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) to avoid appearing defeatist at a critical political juncture.
For one, the AICC discerned that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] could exploit the disarray in the Congress over Mr. Tharoor to engineer more defections.
The CPI(M)‘s dalliance with UDF alliance partners, notably the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), by calling for a “broad agreement” between secular parties to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party’s “Hindu majoritarian” agenda in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections had the AICC worried.
The AICC felt the KPCC needed to present a united front to reassure political partners and hold the UDF alliance together.
Secondly, the BJP’s State unit had closed ranks and robustly wooed the Congress’s traditional vote banks, particularly the Christian community in Central Kerala.
The AICC deemed that the infighting over Mr. Tharoor would forfeit the Congress’s leverage over the ruling front on various issues.
The furore over Mr. Tharoor’s alleged one-person political adventurism had taken an acrimonious turn recently, spilt out into the public realm and eventually emerged as a litmus test in AICC’s quest to bring a semblance of unity in the KPCC.
A KPCC executive meeting last week reportedly saw hours-long airing of grievances against Mr. Tharoor by top leaders frustrated over the MP’s alleged attempts to find wellsprings of support among community-based organisations in his “pursuit for Chief Ministership”.
The influential Nair Service Society general secretary G. Sukumaran Nair inserted a note of turmoil into the discord in the KPCC by championing Mr. Tharoor as a future Chief Minister and “disparaging” Leader of Opposition V. D. Satheesan and senior leader Ramesh Chennithala as “failed helmsmen”.
The AICC wants the KPCC to urgently turn a page on the discomfiting chapter.
