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Three former TNCC chiefs unlisted

Tindivanam K Ramamurthee, K V Thangabalu and Kumari Anandan, past presidents of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, find their names missing from the delegates list for electing the Congress president.

What's great about three former leaders not getting elected to the All-India Congress Committee or even the Pradesh Congress Committee, who constitute the electoral college for the national party presidency? Nothing unusual as far as the Congress goes, other than the fact that elections have not yet been conducted.

Incumbent E V K S Elangovan says that organisational elections at the district-level are on and results should be available in time for the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee presidential polls on November 12.

He claims that he has not decided on contesting for the party presidency. But reports say there has not been any activity resembling organisational elections at their level, though there has been dissident activity, condemning the 'packed' list of delegates for the AICC conference, where the party president will be elected.

Jitendra Prasada may have his hands full, if only local dissidents are willing to co-operate in 'exposing' the corrupt ways of Congress elections. Only that none of the three leaders, who had started making their charges in public even earlier, were away when Prasada launched his campaign for the Congress presidency from the Rajiv Gandhi memorial in Sriperumpudur.

"Our fight is against the TNCC leadership, not against Soniaji," they clarified in unison.

According to the dissidents, the list of AICC delegates from the state had been finalised in New Delhi, with the blessings of central leaders. If someone thought that the list would be formally published at the end of the election process, as the official list of those elected from the state, it is not to be.

It has since been 'leaked' in true Congress style and the three former party presidents find their names missing. So do a host of others.

Tamil Nadu elects 71 AICC members and 531 PCC members, who form part of the electoral college for the presidential polls.

What should have been a formal, official duty, to be discharged by state returning officer and former Kerala minister K Sankaranarayanan, assumed the size of negotiations at Delhi, where it was finalised.

Of the three fallen leaders, only Thangabalu's faction seems to have got four returning officers from the list it submitted.

This is not the first time such charges have been traded during Congress elections.

The last time they were held, Elangovan was a nobody in state Congress affairs, but factions led by Ramamurthee and Kumari Anandan had protested against nominated incumbent Thangabalu 'fixing' elections.

Then it was in favour of Sitaram Kesri, who had put Thangabalu in the place of Anandan, through nomination, in time for re-working the TNCC membership list, for 'packing' the AICC delegates' list with loyalists.

Most delegates from Tamil Nadu are believed to have voted for Kesri in a triangular fight for presidency against Sharad Pawar and the late Rajesh Pilot.

For a party that lost power in the state in 1967 and with no great hopes of returning to power, factional feuds in the Tamil Nadu unit will make factions in Congress-ruling states like Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh shy away in disgust.

Time was when P V Narasimha Rao as prime minister and party president ordered AICC polls for the first time since the 1969 vertical split of the party in 1992.

Rival factions spent sleepless nights, enrolling new members with such a frenzy that film stars Rajnikanth, Revathi, Kushboo and a host of others found themselves as primary members of the Congress.

The PCC elections were never held, even when the AICC polls concluded without much of a hitch at Tirupati.

This time round, the state Congress need not have to contend with such factions as those led by G K Moopanar and Vazhappadi K Ramamurthy, who have political outfits of their own.

The Congress: The War Within

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