The emphatic win of the official panel in the election to the director board of the Indira Gandhi Cooperative Hospital in Kannur appears to have organisationally emboldened Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K. Sudhakaran.
The new team has resoundingly put paid to the reign of Mambaram Divakaran at the hospital's helm for the past 30 years. Mr. Divakaran was widely reckoned as Mr. Sudhakaran's arch-rival and bug bear in the hotbed of Congress politics in Kannur.
In an arguably effusive message that seems targeted more at the Congress rank and file, Mr. Sudhakaran staunchly defends reorganisation amidst stewing opposition from the well-entrenched ‘A’ and ‘I’ factions. The party has triumphed over divisiveness and exclusion. It has dashed the hope of soothsayers who predicted organisational anarchy and ruin.
Mr. Sudhakaran claims the Congress has recast itself into a lean and mean election-winning machine by the whittling down of jumbo committees and engineering a merit-based transformational shift in the KPCC leadership. Notably, the party held its own in the recent local body byelections.
The new and inclusive KPCC leadership, he says, has steered the party away from internal disputes by recommitting itself to expose the wrongdoings of the Left Democratic Front government. The generational shift has animated the Congress base.
V.D. Satheesan praised
Mr. Sudhakaran also compliments Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan, his prime backer in the KPCC. The Pinarayi Vijayan government had confronted an informed, firm, well-mannered but fiery Opposition in the Assembly. The United Democratic Front's responsible conduct in the House stood in stark contrast to that of the LDF when it was in the opposition.
An insider says the KPCC has preset its trajectory of political attack against the CPI(M). It hopes to exploit the "divisions" in the ruling party as it begins district conferences. The Kannur district conference has provided the Congress "potent" ammunition. It hopes to throw light on the behind-the-scenes power struggle in the CPI(M) in the district.
Failing to protect Kerala's interest in Mullaperiyar, mustering public opinion against the K-Rail project, highlighting "illegal" use of public funds to defend political assailants, refusal to slash local fuel taxes, nepotism and police "highhandedness" would power the impending Congress street protests, he says.
