By IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : In politics there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, and the statement is turning true for veteran Kerala politician K. Karunakaran who arrives in Delhi Saturday to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
It is quite a climb down for Karunakaran, a four-time Congress chief minister, who had left Congress and floated his own outfit in 2005. Karunakaran had then stunned the political observers when he referred to Sonia as “madama” (colloquial term for foreign lady in Malayalam).
He merged his party with the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) last year.
With age catching up and Karunakaran getting more and more isolated in politics here, he again did a volte-face and announced early this month that he was ready for an unconditional return to the Congress.
Before leaving for Delhi Saturday, the veteran leader had a meeting with his close aides and told them that he was going with programmes to strengthen the Congress in Kerala.
“He is planning to organise a rally at Kochi or Thrissur in the second week of January to formally mark his return to the Congress party. And during his visit to Delhi he is planning to invite Rahul Gandhi for the rally,” a close Karunakaran aide told IANS.
But Oomen Chandy of the Congress, leader of the opposition in the state assembly, brushed aside the idea of a rally, saying these things had to be decided by the Congress high command.
All eyes are now on Karunakaran and the strategy he adopts to get his son K. Muraleedharan back into the Congress. Muraleedharan is in the NCP and has already announced that the biggest enemy of NCP is the Congress party.