KPCC President row: Did the Congress central leadership mishandle the issue?

Posters backing K. Sudhakaran as Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee president have appeared in Kottayam and Kannur, amid speculation that the Congress high command may announce his replacement this week.

Notably, some of the posters have surfaced in areas considered the primary stronghold of a leader who is rumoured to be a frontrunner for the post.

Last week, Sudhakaran met with the Congress high command in Delhi, fueling speculation that his replacement would be announced soon. According to sources, a section of the state leadership is unhappy with the central leadership’s delay in making the announcement, which they believe allowed Sudhakaran to mobilise party cadres and complicate what was intended to be a quiet exit.

There were indications that K. Sudhakaran was initially contented with the way Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi treated him in Delhi and was prepared to step down. However, the growing media discourse around his possible replacement and health condition appears to have prompted him to take a firm stand against an unceremonious exit from the KPCC president’s post. 

Reports that AICC general secretary Deepa Das Munshi, in her feedback to the high command, recommended Sudhakaran’s replacement have reportedly angered his camp. Some of his supporters have now demanded that Munshi be removed as the party's in-charge for Kerala affairs.

Sudhakaran’s defiant stand also draws strength from the support extended by senior leaders such as K. Muraleedharan and Shashi Tharoor. Nevertheless, despite earlier consensus that any leadership change in the KPCC should be carried out with Sudhakaran’s consent, the high command is likely to proceed with the replacement.

Interestingly, the discussions in the public domain that the Congress was considering a Christian leader to balance community equations — and that the Catholic Church was lobbying for the KPCC president post—appear to have backfired. 

The mouthpiece of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church sharply criticised the party in an editorial, stating that the Church is unlikely to demand a minister or a KPCC president. “What matters is not the religious identity of the party president, but the secular character of the party,” the editorial said. Notably, there are murmurs that such discussions also arose because of the mishandling of the entire issue by the central leadership of the grand old party.

India