Sudheeran blamed for Congress defeat in 2016

Sparks flew thick and fast at the executive committee meeting of the Congress’s Kerala unit yesterday where former state party chief V M Sudheeran came under severe attack, with some attributing its loss in 2016 assembly elections to his leadership.The meeting, called to discuss the Congress defeat in the Chengannur assembly by-election on May 28 and also the manner in which a Rajya Sabha seat was gifted to Kerala Congress-Mani, which returned to the Congress-led United Democratic Front, veered off course into a free-for-all when supporters of Sudheeran and the majority faction in the party led by former chief minister Oommen Chandy took on each another.Things even came to a stage where the proceedings had to be stopped for 10 minutes.Venting his anger at what transpired in the executive, Sudheeran, talking to reporters later, said even though he quit as party president in 2017 on health issues, there were other problems too.“But that was just one issue... and another issue was, I just could not go forward as the party was heavily under the control of ‘group managers’, which was one reason for the downfall of the party, as several good workers in the party who had no affiliation to any group were not able to come up,” he said.Sudheeran also said another factor for the electoral setback in the 2016 was the “faulty selection of Congress candidates which was done on group affiliations”.Veteran party legislator and former minister K C Joseph dismissed his statement as nothing but eyewash.“If (then assembly speaker) G Karthikeyan was made the president, instead of Sudheeran, the then Oommen Chandy government would have returned to office. But (it didn’t) because of Sudheeran, who as president, went on a rampage criticising each and every action of his own government... it came at the fag end of the government’s tenure,” Joseph said.“In today’s meeting there was a general consensus that there should be no washing dirty linen in public and see what he did, minutes after he came out.” Chandy was absent as he was in Andhra Pradesh on his first visit after he was appointed general secretary in charge of the state.