With the Tamil Nadu elections only a few months away, it seems that all is not well in the Tamil Nadu Congress. Moments after the party announced a new team for the state, Sivaganga MP and P Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram has stoked the controversy.
“What the Tamil Nadu Congress needs is a compact team, not a super jumbo committee. These big committees are useless. With the elections 90 days away, we need a team that has the authority and the responsibility, “he told News18.com.
The reference is to the announcement of 32 vice presidents, 57 general secretaries and 104 secretaries and treasurers who have been appointed. Karti responded immediately by tweeting “These giant committees are useless … No one will have authority, which means there is no responsibility,” he tweeted. In his tweet, he tagged Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and the organization in charge KC Venugopal.
Congress currently has 7 MLAs in the 234-seat assembly and 8 deputies out of 39 in the state. Congress expects to compete strongly in at least 25 seats, and the number of incumbents far exceeds the seats from which Congress can compete.
It is a state that is definitely the focus of Congress as it has some high profile faces like P Chidambaram, Karti and B Manickam. But it is a state where the party relies heavily on the DMK alliance partner, and has lost some faces like Jayanthi Natarajan and Khushboo over the years. They might not get many votes, but they certainly got attention.
Karti has been very eloquent about the state of the party, not only in his state but throughout the country. Although Karti did not sign the letter of the ‘group of 23’, many of his thoughts have been similar to them.
This time in Lok Sabha, while Congress fell far short of expectations, it did better in the South, giving the party hope for a resurgence, which is why this year’s elections in Tamil Nadu and Kerala are even more important.
But the main obstacle for the party is a potential rise of the BJP, which has been working hard to break into the southern states. Although the saffron party still has a long way to go, knowing the party’s track record and current trajectory, the danger for Congress is that it may not be long before the BJP overtakes it in the state.
However, sources in Congress dismissed Karti’s objections saying that a party has to balance demands and that the people who are appointed will ultimately help the party.
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