Of the 52 seats that the Congress had won in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, 15 were from Kerala. Retaining that number in the 2024 polls is a major challenge before the party, which began a two-day brainstorming session, Navsankalp Chintan Shivir here on Saturday to get ready for the polls.
The strategy of the party is to draw similarities between the Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in the State and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre and be alert against new players such as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Twenty20. This was evident from the speeches delivered by leaders such as All India Congress Committee general secretary in-charge of organisation K.C. Venugopal, Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) president K. Sudhakaran, former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and senior leader Ramesh Chennithala on the first day.
Former KPCC presidents Mullappally Ramachandran and V.M. Sudheeran were conspicuous by their absence.
Opening the shivir in the morning, Mr. Venugopal alleged that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had been converted into an “election department” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Union government was forcing Central agencies to act in a biased way. At the same time, efforts were on to polarise society on communal lines.
‘Authoritarian line’
He alleged that Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was following a similar authoritarian political line after his return to power. All the powers were getting concentrated in Mr. Vijayan. Mr. Venugopal claimed that the LDF victory in the 2021 Assembly polls was a result of an alliance between the BJP and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)]. The BJP had then created an impression that the Central agencies were about to arrest Mr. Vijayan in the diplomatic channel gold smuggling case. A kind of fear was created in the minds of certain religious communities.
“These factors primarily contributed to the LDF victory. But we know what happened later. The ED, which questioned former Congress president Rahul Gandhi for 54 hours in five days and party president Sonia Gandhi recently, seemed to be not interested in interrogating Mr. Vijayan,” Mr. Venugopal said.
Mr. Chennithala almost echoed these claims and went a step ahead to warn the party cadre about organisations such as the AAP and Twenty20. “We need to be careful about these apolitical groups which claim that the LDF and the United Democratic Front (UDF) are outdated. They are trying to eat into our vote banks. Parties such as the AAP are always found to play second fiddle to the BJP,” he alleged.
The delegates were split into groups which discussed various issues. The event will conclude on Sunday with the declaration of a ‘Mission 24’, an action plan for the Lok Sabha polls.
