With Tamil Nadu elections just a few months away, it appears all is not well in Tamil Nadu Congress. Just moments after the party announced a new team for the state, Sivaganga MP and P Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram has stoked controversy.
“What the Tamil Nadu Congress needs is a compact team not a super jumbo committee. These large committees serve no purpose. With elections 90 days away we need a team which has the authority and accountability,” he told News18.com.
The reference is to the announcement of 32 vice-presidents, 57 general secretaries and 104 secretaries and treasurers that have been appointed. Karti responded immediately by tweeting “These jumbo committees serve no purpose… No one will have any authority which means no accountability,” he tweeted. He tagged Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and organisation in charge KC Venugopal in his tweet.
Congress, at present, has 7 MLAs in the 234-seat assembly, and 8 MPs out of the 39 from the state. The Congress hopes to contest strongly in at least 25 seats and the number of office bearers far outnumbers the seats Congress may contest from.
It’s a state which is definitely the focus for the Congress as it has some high profile faces like P Chidambaram, Karti and B Manickam. But it’s a state where the party is heavily reliant on alliance partner DMK, and has lost some faces like Jayanthi Natarajan and Khushboo over the years. They may not swing many votes but they certainly grabbed attention.
Karti has been very vocal on the state of the party, not just in his state but across the country. Though Karti did not sign the letter of ‘group of 23’ but many of his thoughts have been similar to them.
This time around in Lok Sabha while Congress fell much below expectations, it did better in the South, giving the party hope of a resurgence, which is why elections this year in Tamil Nadu and Kerala are even more important.
But the major obstacle for the party is a potential rise of the BJP, which has been working hard to make inroads into the southern states. Though the saffron party still has a long way to go, knowing the party’s track record and current trajectory, the danger for Congress is that it may not be long before BJP overtakes it in the state.
Sources in the Congress however dismissed Karti’s objections saying a party has to balance demands, and the people who are appointed will in the end help the party.
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