THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Trouble breaks out in the Congress' Kerala unit every now and then, and after a lull, a rift has developed again with letters and emails being sent to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi complaining against state President K. Sudhakaran and the way he is operating.
Trouble broke out after Sudhakaran decided to rejig the remaining office bearers of the state party unit and also the district units.
No sooner had he begun to do that, it led to a stream of complaints and this time, five party MPs conveyed their displeasure to Gandhi and soon came the news that the party high command has sought that the reconstitution of the party units be kept on hold. This irked Sudhakaran, who also shot a letter to the high command.
Sudhakaran, according to a source in the know of things, has said he is least interested to clinging on to the post if the situation is such where the high command does not take him into confidence and fails to even tell him who are those lawmakers who have complained against him.
In the Congress' Kerala unit, time and again, there is a churning process when the top leaders shift their allegiance depending on the situation as the party here has always been divided between factions.
Till last year, the two prominent factions was led by popular former two time Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and his archrival and former Leader of Opposition Ramesh Chennithala, but following the Assembly poll debacle, the high command stepped in and brought in Sudhakaran as the state chief and V.D. Satheesan as the Leader of Opposition, forcing the two erstwhile rivals to join hands.
But when things appeared to be smooth for the new duo of Sudhakaran and Satheesan, differences cropped up and the reason is with a new power centre in Delhi gaining shape in the form of party General Secretary, Organisation, K.C. Venugopal, who seems to have taken Satheesan into confidence. At this, Sudhakaran lost his cool and appears to be short of support of big guns.
However, downplaying the new developments, Satheesan said Congress is a very big democratic party.
"I don't think that there is anything to be reported. There are no issues in the Congress that cannot be resolved. When a decision to cut down the number of office bearers, especially in a party like Congress, where democracy is followed, it might take a longer time, " said Satheesan and feigned ignorance about Sudhakaran's letter to the high command.
Another major problem is that the Kerala unit of the Congress has several leaders at the top level, including four former state party chiefs who are quite active and also numerous senior legislators who are attached to the various factions and hence, fat egos come into play.