"As a Rajya Sabha member, the Congress is looking for a leader who is articulate," Sreenivasan said. Liju's chances will improve only if Kerala's leaders band together in support of him.
Digital Desk: Refusing to learn from its previous electoral disasters, the Congress high command appears to be sticking to the same old script of imposing its nominee over the choice of the state unit in the Rajya Sabha elections in Kerala. For a change, the party's state leadership refused to budge and insisted that its proposal be given priority.
State Congress president K Sudhakaran not only informed the high command that Sreenivasan Krishnan, the party's nominee, was not acceptable to the state leadership, which preferred young leader M Liju. Sudhakaran's actions did not end there. On Wednesday, he accompanied Liju to meet Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi in an attempt to persuade the central leadership of the importance of the issue.
Liju is a former Alappuzha district president and member of the Congress political affairs committee. According to the numbers in the state assembly, Congress has a good chance of winning one of the three seats for which elections will be held, and the high command will make the final decision on a candidate within two days.
Sreenivasan, a 58-year-old Thrissur native and national Congress secretary in charge of Telangana, emerged as a strong contender for the seat on Tuesday.
He ran for a seat in the subsequent assembly election as well. He did not, however, succeed on both occasions. He is said to be close to Priyanka Gandhi's husband, Robert Vadra. "Those were rumours because my association with Robert Vadra lasted only a few days." I work full-time for the Congress Party and have been doing so for the last four years, 15 days a month, from Telangana.
"As a Rajya Sabha member, the Congress is looking for a leader who is articulate," Sreenivasan said. Liju's chances will improve only if Kerala's leaders band together in support of him. However, this does not appear to be the case. Senior Congress MP K Muraleedharan has written a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi requesting that those who did not win assembly elections be barred from running for the Rajya Sabha ticket.
There is widespread dissent among state leaders over the move to make Sreenivasan the candidate. It is learnt that if there is a dispute, the final world will be that of AK Antony who is vacating the seat. This is not the first time he has evinced keen interest in electoral politics. During 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Sreenivasan lobbied for Chalakudy constituency.
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