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AICC persuades Satheesan to helm Mission 2025
Leader of the Opposition stayed away from at least two Mission 2025 meetings in Kottayam and Thiruvananthapuram following an alleged rift with the KPCC leadership. Satheesan says he will attend the meeting in Malappuram on July 30
The Congress’s high command appears to have scraped through a political stress test by preventing “divisions” within the party’s rank and file from sinking its ambitious “Mission 2025” objective of winning the 2025 local body elections.
It has persuaded Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan to reassume charge of the party project after he stayed away from at least two Mission 2025 meetings in Kottayam and Thiruvananthapuram following an alleged rift with the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) leadership. Mr. Satheesan said he would attend the Mission 2025 meeting in Malappuram on July 30.
The discordant chorus that erupted in the KPCC over Mr. Satheesan’s alleged bid to use Mission 2025 to stamp his authority on the party had transiently imperilled the All India Congress Committee’s (AICC) attempt to craft a unified message on the shortcomings of the Union and State governments ahead of the local body elections in Kerala.
‘Trespass on fiefdom’
Some KPCC office-bearers saw Mr. Satheesan’s outreach to the rank and file as a trespass on their traditional fiefdoms and convened an online conference in the latter’s absence. KPCC president K. Sudhakaran and Mr. Satheesan had reportedly approached the party high command independently, seeking urgent intervention.
Consequently, AICC general secretary in Kerala Deepa Dasmunshi had asked the chairman of the KPCC disciplinary committee Thiruvanchoor Radhakrishnan to examine the matter and ferret out those who portrayed the party as a divided house. The AICC had explicitly banned “group meetings” and parallel political activity and sensed an attempt to undermine the party’s organisational integrity.
‘Untrue disclosures’
The AICC felt that the “exaggerated and untrue” disclosures shifted public attention away from the CPI(M) and BJP and instead focussed on the “fault lines” in the KPCC leadership. Divisions in the Congress have led to resignations, defections, public mudslinging, and social media skirmishes. The AICC can ill-afford a repeat of past years, lest the Congress in Kerala squander away the political gains it made in the Lok Sabha elections.
It had framed Mission 2025 as a hedge against the Congress defeat in the 2020 local body polls and 2021 Assembly elections, despite a strong showing in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. At least for now, AICC has persuaded sub-groups in the KPCC to strike a detente.
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