Thiruvananthapuram, Dec 26: The Congress in Kerala is facing a bunch of issues as general elections come near and a leader aforesaid an assessment has been done on the “performance of the sitting Lok Sabha members” from the state.
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and state party chief Ramesh Chennithala command 1st|the primary} spherical of their talks in city and their first task is to prepared that all allies to tend seats. The state has simply twenty seats within the Lok Sabha.
Over the last several parliamentary elections, the common feature has been the Congress contests 17 seats, the Indian Union Muslim League contests 2, that it’s won last time, and also the Kerala Congress (Mani) contests one, that too won.
But this time it remains to be seen if identical seat sharing formula would continue as the Janata dal (S), then led by media baron M.P.Veerendra Kumar, that was part of the Left opposition within the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, has split. Its Socialist Janata dal faction has jumped in to join the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).
The group quit the opposition Left Democratic Frontafter its demand to retain the Kozhikode seat command by Kumar was turned down by the Left parties in 2009.
Similarly, the IUML and kc (M) are also hoping to cut price for a further seat as demands inside these parties have intense for an additional seat.
“Each of the allies has its own principle to demand for a lot of…Very shortly we are going to terminate the intra-party seat-sharing by initiating talks with every ally,” aforesaid Chandy.
Chennithala added: “We would like to contest a lot of seats and every one parties have such thoughts too. Nothing has been finalised as yet and that we are assured that we are going to be ready to prepared things amicably at the earliest and hit the campaign trail.”
Another drawback that Chandy and his colleagues face is regarding deciding the list of candidates.
This time the Congress is facing a Herculean task as within the 2009 polls 13 of its candidates won the polls, and of them 5 are ministers. These are: Shashi Tharoor (Thiruvananthapuram), K.V.Thomas (Ernakulam), Kodikunnil Suresh (Mavelikera), K.C.Venugopal (Alappuzha) and Mulapally Ramachandran (Vadakkara).
“We are told that there has been an assessment done on the performance of the sitting Lok Sabha members of our party by our national leadership. If that be the case, then either one or 2 of the sitting members would become ineligible,” aforesaid a senior Congress leader who didn’t would like to be known.
“And then we are left with six seats wherever new candidates would got to be known. From this, the issue of giving either one or maybe 2 seats to ladies is also doubtless to return up,” he added.
The leader aforesaid the choice of candidates are a tough task because the list of hopefuls is pretty long.