By IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : Just over a month after returning to the Congress party, veteran leader K. Karunakaran Tuesday fired the first salvo against state party managers saying ordinary workers had little role in the organisation and the party was not capitalising on the failures of the Left-led government.
His attack on the party comes just two days ahead of Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s two-day visit to the state.
“I will be meeting Sonia Gandhi when she arrives here on a two-day visit later this week. I will meet her separately and would raise the issue of conducting organisational polls for the party,” Karunakaran told reporters here. Sonia Gandhi is arriving on Feb 14.
“We returned to the Congress to strengthen the party and what I have found out is that the ordinary workers feel they have very little role now. Moreover, the general impression is that despite lot of anti-people policies of the ruling Left government, the opposition has not been able to do much,” said the veteran leader.
When asked whether he would take the fight to the enemy camp, he said: “I will just warn our people.”
Karunakaran first raised the banner of revolt in 2003 while he was in the Congress party and his prime grouse was that the party was not holding organisational polls. He has upped the ante on the same issue after returning to the fold.
Karunakaran, who floated his own party and later merged it with the Nationalist Congress Party of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar after failing to make any impact in the state, met Sonia Gandhi last December to seek her permission to rejoining the party.
On Feb 1, he held a huge rally at Kochi to show that he still has supporters.
His criticism of the state party managers ahead of Sonia Gandhi’s visit is seen in political circles as a move to impress his supporters and to show them that he still has enough ammunition left in him, especially when it comes to attacking his arch rival, leader of opposition Oommen Chandy.
Karunakaran believes that Chandy was largely instrumental in forcing him out of the Congress in 2005.