Is Ramesh Chennithala prepared to lead Congress in Kerala?

A meeting of the Congress parliamentary party was held in Thiruvananthapuram on May 29 to choose the leader of Opposition in the Kerala Assembly.

Oommen Chandy proposed the name of Ramesh Chennithala as the new leader of Opposition in the presence of central observers Sheila Dixit, Deepak Babaria and Mukul Wasnik - which was duly approved by the legislators.

A couple of days back, on May 27, Oommen Chandy and Chennithala had held a meeting with PCC chief VM Sudheeran following which it was decided among the leaders that Chennithala would be the new leader of Opposition while Chandy would continue as the UDF chairman.

The media had already been speculating this as Chandy had dropped hints that he wouldn't press his claims to be the leader of the Opposition since his A-faction had fewer MLAs than the I-faction led by Chennithala.

There have been murmurs of protest from certain quarters in the I-faction since then and it was reported in the media that K Muralidharan, son of the late K Karunakaran was reportedly upset at the way the leaders had come to a consensus even before the parliamentary party had met.

Many in the party rank and file too were reported to be distressed at the way the decision was taken undemocratically. The naming of Chennithala as the Opposition leader became a formality in the process. While Muralidharan's disappointment was probably on account of his own ambitions, after a very impressive victory in the Vattiyoorkkavu constituency in a tight three-way contest between the BJP and the CPM, the disenchantment among the Congress loyalists and the rank and file had more to it.

The party had suffered a huge defeat in the just concluded election and a course correction with a new leadership was what many had hoped for.

Ramesh Chennithala's perceived soft stand on the BJP and the circumstances of his victory in the Haripad constituency had fuelled many theories.

Chennithala had never quite taken on the Hindutva elements in the run up to the polls and he was very careful to not criticise the leadership of the BDJS, a key constituent of the NDA, which had some votes in his constituency.

While Chennithala had also been the Nair face of the party due to his closeness to the Nair Service Society (NSS) and its general secretary Sukumaran Nair, the setback the Congress received as a result of a part of their Nair votes going directly to the BJP in the just last Assembly polls has not escaped anyone's notice.

It was observed by many commentators in the post poll analysis that the Congress candidates that had taken a strong stand against communalism and spoken out against appeasement of all kinds managed to retain their seats with good margins.

The impressive wins of Muralidharan, KPCC vice president VD Satheesan, and VT Balram et al have been cited as examples. In these circumstances, and also in the wake of the shift of a section of minority votes to the LDF, it was noted that a strong leadership was the need of the hour for the Congress legislature party.

Muralidharan and VD Satheesan would have been the contenders in that case.

While Satheesan is still not considered senior enough, Muralidharan has legacy issues to deal with. Despite his stable and consistent performance in the past five years, the past continues to haunt him in his attempts to claw his way back in the party hierarchy.

The attempts by the late K Karunakaran in the 1990s to promote his son Muralidharan had brought him the disaffection of many in his faction including the then KPCC chief Vayalar Ravi, Chennithala and G Karthikeyan.

Except in his three-year tenure as the PCC chief between 2001 and 2004 when he acquitted himself admirably, which came to him out of turn due to the late Karunakaran's bargaining tactics, Muralidharan hasn't been a team man unlike a Chennithala.

Chennithala rose to prominence in the party when Sonia Gandhi deputed him from the AICC to the post of KPCC chief in 2005 after Karunakaran and Muralidharan had split the state Congress to form the Democratic Indira Congress (DIC) with nine Congress legislators and 2 other UDF MLAs.

Chennithala performed well to build the party back up in the state with Oommen Chandy and remained the PCC chief till 2014.

The tacit arrangement reached between the Congress and the NSS ahead of the 2011 election, to elevate Chennithala into a "Key" post in the Cabinet became a thorny issue for the Chandy government in 2013.

After long parleys and statements detrimental to the party that became the talking point in the media, Chennithala was finally made the Home Minister in the government in January 2014. By then, Chennithala had deftly managed to become the leader of the I-faction.

It is interesting that back in 2005 when Chennithala took over as the PCC chief he wasn't part of I-faction and had sworn to make groups or factions irrelevant in Congress' Kerala unit.

In the meanwhile, Muralidharan and his new party failed to gain any traction as they couldn't find a perch in the LDF and was compelled to have a seat sharing agreement with the UDF in the 2006 Assembly elections.

Having managed to win just a solitary seat among the 17 they had contested, Karunakaran merged his party with the NCP unit in the state to gain a backdoor entry into the LDF and Muralidharan was made the state NCP President in the bargain. Muralidharan earned the dubious distinction of becoming the state president of two national parties in a span of two years.

NCP was thrown out of the LDF as a result of this and later, Muralidharan was expelled by the NCP when he made overtures to the Congress in 2009 long after he chose to remain in the NCP even when Karunakaran returned to the Congress fold in December 2007.

Finally, following the death of Karunakaran in December 2010, the sympathy wave ensured that Muralidharan returned to the party. He got a ticket to contest in the 2011 Assembly elections and won from Vattiyoorkkavu and has been performing well ever since.

With the choice limited to Chennithala and Muralidharan, and with Satheesan not yet having the backing of the I-faction nor being senior enough, it is natural that the mantle would fall on Chennithala for his accommodative style of functioning.

Many in the party suspect that Muralidharan as the leader of Opposition would have revived the bickering between groups that was a staple in the Congress politics from the early '80s to 2005.

But if Chennithala continues his soft approach towards the Hindutva elements, it would be really detrimental to the fortunes of the Congress party in the next five years with the BJP lurking in the background.

It remains to be seen if Chennithala manages to change that image and assume leadership of a party that is once again facing a huge crisis similar to the one in 2005, when he assumed the post of the KPCC chief.