Reacting to the blame game of Congress leaders in Kerala following the poor show of the party in the recent local body polls, the All Indian Congress Committee (AICC) has come out urging the leaders to not air their criticisms publicly. AICC general secretary in-charge of Kerala Tariq Anwar on Saturday wrote to the Congress leaders in the state in this regard. "I earnestly hope that our leaders will realise that by trading charges against each other, they are giving strength to the opponents," he said in a statement.
Anwar urged all Congress leaders in the state to desist from airing their differences publicly and instead take up their grievances at the party forum. Their complaint will be looked into and resolved, he said.
Soon after the local body poll results were out on December 16, rumblings had begun in the Congress with some state leaders openly criticising Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president Mullappally Ramachandran for the party's poor show.
Posters had appeared in front of the KPCC offices seeking to dissolve the district Congress committee. Congress sympathisers in Kozhikode had also put up boards criticising the party's state leadership.
Ramachandran had on Thursday taken full responsibility for the party's lacklustre performance in the local body polls.
"My activities since I took charge as KPCC chief is an open book," he said, adding, "Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan."
Many senior leaders, including former Union Minister P J Kurien and three Lok Sabha MPs — K Muraleedharan, K Sudhakaran and Rajmohan Unnithan — had slammed Mullappally Ramachandran, saying the organisational set-up of the Congress party was weak.
Flex boards had appeared on Saturday in front of the KPCC office in Thiruvananthapuram and some other places in the city, suggesting K Sudhakaran to take over as the state KPCC president. Posters had also appeared against Kollam DCC president, Bindu Krishna, alleging that she was a BJP agent and had worked for the saffron party in the polls.
Meanwhile, in a release, the AICC stated that the Congress president Sonia Gandhi has appointed former MP P Vishwanathan, former MLA Ivan D'Souza and PV Mohan as secretarie attached to general secretaries in Kerala.
Earlier in November, too, AICC general secretary Tariq Anwar had asked senior party leaders across the country to desist from going public about internal part matters after Ghulam Nabi Azad had demanded structural reforms in the Congress leadership.
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