TRIVANDRUM, 1 May 2005 — Dissident Congress leader K. Karunakaran announced yesterday he would quit his Rajya Sabha seat, a move that is being seen as a precursor to his leaving the party.
“It is now only a question of time before I resign my Rajya Sabha seat,” Karunakaran told a TV channel here.
“Political expediency (demand that I resign the upper house seat) because I won it on Congress ticket. It could take place either before May 1 or any time after that,” he added.
Karunakaran has called a meeting of his supporters in Trichur today, where he is expected to announce the formation of a new party.
Reports indicate it will be called the National Congress (Indira). Karunakaran would be its chairman and his son K. Muraleedharan its ‘working chairman’.
The Congress has expelled Muraleedharan, a former state party chief, for six years on disciplinary grounds. This has prompted Karunakaran to up his anti-Congress stance.
However, Karunakaran has seen a steady decline in his support base ever since he indicated that a new party would be formed. From at least a dozen legislators, just five or six are now prepared to leave the Congress if he does so.
After the name of the proposed new party surfaced Thursday evening, state Congress Vice President A.C. Jose said the Election Commission would be approached to block its recognition.
“The rules are very clear. No one can use the name of an individual with a political party,” Jose said.
In another development, Prakash Karat, the new Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary, appears to have failed in his first attempt to bring peace in the Kerala unit of his party.
Karat arrived two days ago to take part in the party’s state committee meeting, which was to elect its new secretariat — the decision making body for the state unit.
Despite several rounds of talks with rival factions of the party — one led by state secretary Pinnarayi Vijayan and the other by leader of opposition V.S. Achuthanandan — the meeting wound up Friday evening, failing to elect the new secretariat.
This is the first time in the history of the party that a new state committee failed to elect the 15-member secretariat at its first meeting.
The only consensus at the two-day meeting held in the presence of Karat was the nomination of five new members to the state committee and there too, Vijayan got the better of Achuthanandan by nominating four of his men.
In a release issued by the party, the Kerala CPI-M said the new secretariat would be elected at the next meeting of the state committee on May 21.
“Now a review of the performance of the outgoing secretariat would be held and its report would be placed before the next state committee. Until such time the existing secretariat will continue,” said a senior CPI-M member.
The factional feud had boiled over at the party conference in Malappuram in February.
