Last-ditch efforts to hold Congress elections in Kerala

The Congress is making a last-ditch effort to hold organisational elections in Kerala after they were postponed twice earlier following factional skirmishes. If the current attempt also fails, the party leadership may have to nominate the office-bearers for the state unit, including those for the All-India Congress Committee.

State returning officer Kishore Chandra Deo, who came over from Delhi on Thursday, concluded that it was better to nominate the office-bearers after he gauged the mood of the warring factions.

The trouble between the groups led by K Karunakaran and A K Antony is over a small splinter group led by G Karthikeyan and Ramesh Chennithala. While the Karunakaran group is not ready to acknowledge the group which broke off from its ranks, the Antony group is insisting on accommodating Karthikeyan and his followers.

The Karunakaran group is prepared to recognise the Karthikeyan group as belonging to the Antony group but Karthikeyan and Chennithala reject the idea, even questioning the authority of the Karunakaran faction to decide on their group's status.

"We have already been acknowledged by the party high command. The former party president Narasimha Rao had included the third group in parleys related to the party matters in the state," said a prominent leader of the group. But the group is furious that the state returning officer claimed in Delhi that he had never said that the third group would be acknowledged.

"This is contrary to the stance he had taken earlier," the third group leader complained, adding that elections cannot be held without involving the third group. The Karunakaran group is averse to the Karthikeyan group because it can tilt the scales in favour of the Antony faction in state Congress politics.

Karunakaran, who has returned to state politics after Sitaram Kesri was elected party president, is trying his best to keep control of the state organisation to ensure his own survival and that of his son Muralidharan. Both of them lost considerable ground in the state after their defeat in the general election.

The former Union minister is also worried about the palmolein case in which he is implicated after his plea to quash the first information report was dismissed by the state high court.

Karunakaran knows he cannot win without party backing. He is even prepared to put on hold his son's claim to the post of state party president if it helps him retain control of the organisation.

The ball is in Kesri's court. And on his decision may rest Karunakaran's future in politics.

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